MileSplit Comic Gold: Predicting NY to be stronger than CA

it was an argument lol just to stir up some talk, just a wild prediction thing by seasons end

Yeah but according to them their rankings are the best because they have people states contribute. Whatever that means.

MileSplit HS Boys Rankings wrote:

These guys must be from the east coast because clearly they are not seeing straight if they think the top 3 NY teams could beat any one of the top-5 CA teams. It's not even close. Who does their rankings?

In California the correct order for boys teams is Great Oak, Dana Hills, Loyola, Roosevelt, Dublin. Great Oak and Dana Hills are once again neck and neck and could be on the podium at NXN. Loyola is a top 10 team at NXN. Roosevelt and Dublin may be top 10 teams at NXN as well. California needs 3 wild cards this year, if not more.

http://www.milesplit.com/videos/231421http://www.milesplit.com/rankings/flo50/932-flo50-boys-team-rankings-2017/2294-flo50-no-3-sep-25

I agree that the talk was just to stir up the views and for clickbait, but I definitely disagree with your views that all five CA teams are better than the top 3 from NY. FM hasn't had a GREAT performance yet, but with Burnt Hills having the 1-4 to match everyone, except for perhaps Loudon Valley in the country, and a fifth that is improving, they are certainly in the mix. Corning has a legit 1-3, a strong 4, and a solid 5 that is better then most of the ranked teams. I think that a wildcard should and will go to NY, but also CA should get one, maybe 2, but NOT 3. Watch for Burnt Hills' neighbors of Niskayuna(NY) to jump into the rankings soon with a breakout performance, and 3/4 of these teams should be able to get to NXN.

Just for Comparisons sake, keep in mind BH #4 ran a 178 a week prior, and GO had a 174 guy at Woodbridge run a 153.

Great Oak at Roy Griak:

3 Carlos Carvajal 12 Great Oak 16:22.9 182.37 182

5 Gabriel Abbes 10 Great Oak 16:33.7 178.77 179

7 Jacob Korgan 12 Great Oak 16:39.2 176.93 177

16 Tyler Tickner 11 Great Oak 16:47.6 174.13 174

24 Gavin Korby 12 Great Oak 16:55.6 171.47 171

BH at Mcqaid:

4 4 Tyler Berg 11 2 Burnt Hills-Ballston La 14:57.2 183

10 10 Evan Brennan 11 5 Burnt Hills-Ballston La 15:09.1 179

13 13 Aidan Gillooley 11 6 Burnt Hills-Ballston La 15:13.3 178

24 24 David Metacarpa 10 2 Burnt Hills-Ballston La 15:36.7 170

27 27 Nick Hunziker 11 14 Burnt Hills-Ballston La 15:40.8 168

VERY similar teams, and I think that Loyola is close, but Dana has a bit of work to catch up, similar to FM/Nisky, and Dublin is well behind and shouldn't be in the conversation.

Overall they are fairly similar in terms of the top four in their regions, so the wildcards are all up in the air.

Niles, you and the MileSplit guys seem to be making the same mistake, which is trusting that the Tullyrunners values are correct. There is a mountain of evidence indicating the McQuaid course runs about 10-20 seconds slower than Woodbridge, not 40 seconds like he's suggesting. The NY teams are way behind.

It's just an indicator, the speed ratings, but they definitely aren't end all be all. Just like, you can take certain teams from around the country and compare times but that doesn't mean necessarily one team is faster than another, but more than often faster marks will come from faster teams. Teams with high speed ratings are better than ones with lower ratings, but if speed ratings were all that was needed to determine who the best is, we wouldn't need championship races, we could just have paper champs.

MileSplit HS Boys Rankings wrote:

Niles, you and the MileSplit guys seem to be making the same mistake, which is trusting that the Tullyrunners values are correct. There is a mountain of evidence indicating the McQuaid course runs about 10-20 seconds slower than Woodbridge, not 40 seconds like he's suggesting. The NY teams are way behind.

Ok, so again I agree with you on that speed ratings are not 100% spot-on for out of NY comparisons. Again I disagree with you that they are the 6-9 point differential that you suggest. This would mean Affolder and Mickey Burke (4th at footlocker a few years back) would be running well below their capabilities that they proved they had elsewhere among national competition. And this goes beyond just these two to numerous other individuals (Lawson,, Bryce Millar) as well as teams (FM a few years back, Liverpool). Bill Meylan did say a few years back that his ratings were not perfect for out-of-state comparisons due to the different 'base level' runners, but only up to 3 points. I believe that as he is not doing more and more out of state ratings, this number has only shrunk, not grown.

But to the original point: I was not originally trying to say that NY and CA are perfectly equal, I was just saying that there is not a large gap. And I think we both agree that CA is still the most competitive region, especially depth-wise, but NY is quite close, as hopefully Manhattan can show with FM+others.

Burnt hills #4 guy hit his head on a tree during the race and their #5 guy is coming back from injury....

I appreciate the civility.

Which Affolder are you talking about? Noah, who ran 14:11 junior year and then 14:12 senior year, or Sam, who ran 14:53 last year?

If you look at the times run at McQuaid, they are almost exactly as I would expect for a fast 3 mile course based on the previous season's track 3200 times.

At Woodbridge as well as the Dana Hills Invitational the times came out to be 10 seconds faster than expected versus 10 seconds slower at McQuaid. Woodbridge and Dana Hills Invitational produced very similar times across the board among those who ran at both invites, which would indicate Dana Hills is very close to Great Oak right now.

Even if the times at McQuaid were the equivalent of being 40 seconds slower, Burnt Hills is barely better than Dublin and about equal with Roosevelt, but not in the same league as Loyola, Dana Hills and Great Oak.

Point being, if the best team in New York is about equal to the fifth team in California then NY definitely should not be hoping for a wild card and CA ought to be getting two.

Sorry to burst your fantasy, but McQuaid 40 sec slower does not put Burnt Hills BARELY better than Dublin. top five of Dublin from Woodbridge+40 is:

14:49 vs 14:57 The #1 for Dublin is 8 sec faster, the the other four avg

15:19 15:09 over ten sec faster then their matchups. Plus if the #4

15:23 15:13 really did hit his head on a tree midrace, that would only

15:38 15:36 give Burnt Hills a better advantage. Corning also would

15:59 15:40 have been right with BH almost to the exact point if they had their #1 running where he was earlier this season, but he didn't race. I think that these two schools are right with Dana Hills at least, and are relatively close to GO, though, we know that GO is practiced at the NXN taper, which could very likely give them a far larger advantage later on this season.

I suppose we'll sort of have to agree to disagree about the competitiveness of the respective regions, and just be glad/hopeful that the awareness on the national scene will lead to all these teams striving to perform even better.

Also: I meant Noah Affolder. Meant to use that as a rebuttal against your claim that Woodbridge was only 10-20 sec faster than McQuaid, since that would mean that Justin Hazel, Elias Opsahl, Kevin Ramos are on about the same level as Affolder, which I tend to think is false. As for the track time equivalencies and variances you mentioned, I don't have the time to delve into all of the track times for the schools, but I do know that many top NY XC schools put a large emphasis on XC and not as much on track, which leads to performances which do not match up all of the time. That could explain some of it.

We talking about high school kids? Not the pros, not the college athletes, but the high school kids.

Niles wrote:

Also: I meant Noah Affolder. Meant to use that as a rebuttal against your claim that Woodbridge was only 10-20 sec faster than McQuaid, since that would mean that Justin Hazel, Elias Opsahl, Kevin Ramos are on about the same level as Affolder, which I tend to think is false. As for the track time equivalencies and variances you mentioned, I don't have the time to delve into all of the track times for the schools, but I do know that many top NY XC schools put a large emphasis on XC and not as much on track, which leads to performances which do not match up all of the time. That could explain some of it.

Noah Affolder ran completely alone when winning McQuaid. He had nobody to really test him. Anyway, Affolder's best race of the season was at FLN last year. Alex Meier finished a fraction of a second ahead of him. Tibeu Proctor finished a fraction of a second behind Affolder.

Meier went on to run 2 seconds faster than Hazel in the 3200 this past track season. Proctor was just over 1 second slower than Hazel in the 3200. I think you may be underestimating Justin Hazel at the very least. Opsahl ran 1:55 for 800 as a freshman, 4:12 for 1600 as a sophomore and then had a soso track season last year that seems to have fired him up over the summer as his result was unexpected. Ramos is a kid you're going to hear more about. He's small and doesn't have a ton of speed, but gets better as the distance increases and is best on hilly courses. There is a very good chance we'll see him at FLN.

When is the next big race for the NY teams like BH, Ithaca, FM, etc? It'll be fun to follow their progress.

Thanks for the discussion.

FM will race at Manhattan, and Corning will most likely and perhaps Ithaca as well. BH will race at their home invite in a week as well, so they won't have any big out of state competition.

How good do you think St. Xavier is from Ohio? They did quite well at McQuaid, but their track times aren't all that impressive. Definitely not at the level you'd expect of an NXN team. Maybe results aren't updated online well in Ohio? They've got the internet over there now, right?

MileSplit HS Boys Rankings wrote:

How good do you think St. Xavier is from Ohio? They did quite well at McQuaid, but their track times aren't all that impressive. Definitely not at the level you'd expect of an NXN team. Maybe results aren't updated online well in Ohio? They've got the internet over there now, right?

They were 3 points ahead of Corning who was without their top runner. I think that they are better than at least 5 of the current ranked teams, but are likely 20-25 or on the bubble. Still confused how Green Hope of VA is ranked so high. They're a pretty good team, but are NOT US#9 good, they are on the watch list good.

I saw a few of their track results from St. Xavier's top guy, and they definitely weren't anything great, but his 1 mi time compared to 2 mi time suggested that he was a good pure distance guy. They have pretty good depth through the 12 guys they brought to the meet, and if they can bring up their 2-5 runners 10-20 sec then I think they challenge some of the better teams for in the Midwest region which could get a wildcard. I'm not sure about the upside of this team because I haven't heard much of them before and I don't think they even competed at NXRs last year. Only time will tell.

The new york version of milesplit was a little less sensational when they brought it up. They said it was possible to get an At-Large. Whether or not they do wouldn't affect CA either

http://ny.milesplit.com/articles/223099?page=2

They also have Green Hope out of the Top 25 in their Speed Rating Rankings

ny.milesplit.com/articles/223428?page=5

Why is Silas Derfel getting all the hype from McQuaid when Thomas Witcowicz ran 6.5 seconds faster?

Bronson, esq wrote:

Why is Silas Derfel getting all the hype from McQuaid when Thomas Witcowicz ran 6.5 seconds faster?

Because Thomas Witcowicz will disappear now back into Canada.

Niles wrote:

Bronson, esq wrote:

Why is Silas Derfel getting all the hype from McQuaid when Thomas Witcowicz ran 6.5 seconds faster?

Because Thomas Witcowicz will disappear now back into Canada.

As any Canuck ought to.