2024 Niwot are the Best HS Boys Team of all Time

Course:

all teams prior to 2014 at Portland meadows.

all teams after at glendoveer.

2022 Newbury at running lane.

As my college coach use to say, the track doesn't lie. What are the 1600/mile & 3200/2 mile times for the Niwot kids so far?

Hunter Robbie 9:23
Keegan Geldean 9:20
Quinn Sullivan 1:55 / 4:18
Gabriel Marshall 9:37
Gavin Engtrakul 9:34

All of them have faster times if you adjust their Colorado times for altitude.

Also Rocco is better than all those guys (especially in track). He ran 14:47 at Desert Twilight. I am not sure why he fell off a bit in the last few weeks but based on the fact that his last three meets (State, NXR, NXN) he has been about 30 seconds back from where he would normally be, my guess is that he has some minor injury that either required some time off, incorporation of more cross training than usual, or both. I'd expect him to be fine for track and for next year in cross. They have a strong chance of a repeat although it's never easy to beat the two Utah powers.

FM 2014 averaged 12:32 at Manhattan. CBA this year averaged 12:41. They still have the McQuaid 5-man course record despite missing Peter Ryan, who was their top finisher at NXN in 15th. There was a snowstorm at Bowdoin Park that year unfortunately, resulting in very slow finishing times, but they averaged 7 seconds faster than St. Anthony's (who averaged 16:14 the week prior) and 11 seconds faster than Liverpool (who averaged 12:48 at Manhattan).

Heck, FM in 2013 were a considerably worse team, finishing 4th at NXN, and they averaged 16:02 at Bowdoin Park, which was narrowly beaten by CBA this year who averaged 15:59 to win NXR Northeast with 39 points. Northport in 2013 averaged 16:10 that day and they only finished 11th at NXN.

So basically in the last 10 years, we've gone from a 16:02 team finishing 4th, to a 15:59 team finishing 5th...that is not a massively significant difference, especially when you consider CBA did not run great at NXN this year and easily could've been top 3.

The only places where we are seeing massive time improvements are on super fast courses that are one step short of a track (Woodbridge, RunningLane), where the super shoes can actually make a difference. On real cross country courses (Bowdoin, Holmdel, VCP), times have not massively progressed over the last decade, and there are still some relics from prior to that (Cathy Schiro 16:46 at VCP in 1984) that would still be incredible today.

Given that, it's quite fair to say that while times have gotten faster, runners have not actually gotten that much better (perhaps 5-10 seconds on average, if I'm being generous), and the truly great teams of the past (York, FM, Great Oak, Arcadia, CBA) would still be great today. And that's not even to touch on the girls, where even Mountain Vista represents a regression from the greatness of Saratoga and FM at their peak.

+1000

I am a huge fan of FM and Saratoga's amazing girls' teams and even they are nowhere close to NP 2021 if I'm being honest. NP 2021 genuinely stood a fighting chance in a dual meet against the rest of the nation, including individuals. Will never be matched and it is embarrassing to suggest that Niwot is even in the conversation.

It is very embarrassing. Even next year it will be tough for Niwot to match the 2021 NP team

American H.S., maybe. They might make top 10 in a Japanese high school race.

newbury would go 1-17, 19, 21-22, and 33 (GI issues), with top 14 averaging 14:31.4

I just used the 5 scorers from NXN.

I 100% agree with this. I don’t think people really understand how good this team was. 2021 NP isn’t just #1 all time, they are #1 all time by a huge margin.

Here’s a fun stat for you: if the young’s and sahlmans didn’t exist, and the team was 5 hypothetical Daniel applefords - they STILL would have won runninglane. And that is against 2021 CM which some believe is another top 10 all time team. Really think about that: a teams #5 averaged better than another top all time teams time.

They literally went 1-2-3-6 at a national meet. They would go 1-4 heads up against almost every team in this “best of all time” conversation. Thier 4th and 5th runners resumes are nxn champion and an 8:52. I know we hyper fixate on the super competitive states, but an 8:52 for most states in America wins states, for some states that’s a generational runner. This was thier 5th man. They made the national championship look like a local invite.

It’s unique in the sense that at least for the girls “best of all time” there is an argument for 2004 toga or 2010fm, I’d also argue that 2020 toga would have been in the conversation if not for Covid. But for the boys, there isn’t a conversation. They are the best ever and it’s not even close.

You mean they would put 17 guys in front of Niwot's #1? I am assuming I misread it but if not that is a little absurd.

Exactly this. I could see someone making an argument for Niwot being competitive for a top 10 spot (at least in the NXN era - hard to say for teams like 1999 York). But NP 2021 and NP 2022 are the crystal clear 1-2 all-time, as mentioned NP 2021 would go 1-4 on Niwot and have a good shot at 1-5, while the 2022 team would go 1-3 with their 4-5 mixing it up with Niwot's scorers. There are only a few all-time great teams ever that have an individual that could beat any one of the Youngs or Sahlmans.

I'm not sure I see the argument over 2004 York, 2014 FM, or 2015 Great Oak (the next three after the NP super-teams), but I think they're in the conversation. A worthy NXN champion, certainly not a weak winner (e.g. Bozeman, Boerne). But not an all-time great team. The biggest things they have going for them are their depth - five guys at 187+ in a single year is amazing and only out-done by Newbury Park 2021 (5th at 189) and 2004 FM (5th at 189) to my knowledge - and their youth. The latter gives them a fair shot at being an all-time great squad next season, but they will need to have a better 1-2-3 punch in order to be a true all-time great. All of the teams listed above had a great 1-2-3: York had McNamara (NXN champion) and the Dettman brothers; FM had Bryce Millar, Peter Ryan, and Kyle Barber; Great Oak had Spencer Dodds, Cole Spencer, and Isaac Cortes. All of those guys had at least one or two great performances on their resume, and most were All-Americans at NXN at least once. Niwot had their top guy come in at 21st in a weak individual year; in a battle of all-time great teams, that's just not good enough. Culpepper probably had the talent to finish higher, but you can't rank teams based on hypotheticals.

I'm also not convinced that this year was crazy competitive. The individual talent for the boys is frankly embarrassing right now; outside of Woodbridge (NOT an XC race) there hasn't been a single major course record broken or even remotely challenged. Obviously NXN was not great conditions this year but let's be honest, Vause was not running under 14:44 in pristine conditions. The Southwest is extremely strong right now, but not in a historic sense; I'm not sure you can really say this American Fork team is any better than their great teams of the past (about on par, at best). California is in their weakest year in a long time, as is New York. Northwest is not particularly strong. South has a bit more depth than usual but no amazing teams at the top end. Belen Jesuit is strong for a Southeast team but not anything crazy. Midwest is in a down year. Heartland is in a down year. Northeast is actually pretty strong but Ridgefield got snubbed, weakening the NXN pool. So essentially every region except Southwest is having anywhere from an average year to a historically terrible year.

This year wasn't competitive? Two boys broke Parker Wolfe's all classification state record at the Colorado state meet this year and one of them missed out on qualifying for NXN by one place because of the insane depth of the SW region.

Read my post again. This year was not competitive outside of the Southwest. I fully realize how good the Southwest is this year; that's why they went 1-2-3 at NXN. But as far as other regions go:

• New York is pathetically weak
• Heartland is pathetically weak
• Southeast has one decent team - about average for the region
• California is weak for California (not the worst region overall, but usually they are one of the best)
• Midwest is weak (same situation as California)
• Northwest is weak (see above)
• South is good for South (but is regularly a bottom 3 region)
• Northeast is good
• Southwest is phenomenal

So 2/9 regions are in a historically bad spot, 3/9 are weaker than usual, 1/9 is about what you'd expect, 2/9 are in a good spot, and 1/9 is having a great year. That is not what I would call a strong competition! Compare to 2015 (imho one of the strongest years on record) where Southwest, California, Midwest, and Heartland all had banner years, and there were good teams coming out of Northwest, Northeast, New York, and South.

This is also apparent in the quality of the at-large teams; Southwest had two great at-larges this year, and Vandegrift was a decent team as well, but there was such a dearth of quality picks after those three that the committee just had to throw one to California because there were no good options. Colonie, Broughton, Jesuit LA, and Bismarck were straight up bad, and neither Rocky Mountain, Ridgefield, Plainfield North, or Glendora were slam dunks.

Looking at it from a program perspective: the perennial powers outside of the Southwest were nonexistent this year. Wayzata, Carmel, FM, Great Oak, the Woodlands, Sandburg etc. all failed to qualify. Southlake Carroll, DGN, and CBA were the only non-Southwest powerhouses to compete well. While I'm happy for Doug Soles that he has found a good place for himself at Herriman, it only served to further concentrate the talent in one region. NXR Southwest was as competitive as NXN itself, and to me, regardless of how good the Southwest is, that's a signal of weak competition at the national level.

For the record, I would say the exact same thing about the early years of NTN and New York's dominance, when multiple podium teams for both genders were NY teams. Sure, NY was great, and those FM/Saratoga/Hilton squads deserve their flowers. But there's also no question that they dominated the national stage because the rest of the nation was weak, and the same thing is happening now with the Southwest.

I read your post again and you said, "there hasn't been a single major course record broken or even remotely challenged" and "The Southwest is extremely strong right now, but not in a historic sense"

If you meant best JV team of all time, or the deepest of all time, I may have to agree with you.

The fact that they put FIFTEEN guys under 16 in a 5k this season is just out of this world