High School Cross Country States; Best to worst

Depends on if you're talking about total talent or talent per capita.

Maine, NH and VT produce a decent amount of good runners when you consider their population. Would put them over most of the southern states, the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyoming, etc.

The OP said High School. Also, the man in which you replied to said "I have no idea what I'm talking about"

It was partly supposed to be troll, based off the recent new england 5k runner threads that have popped up in the last few days. Either way he tried call NE xc runners the worst in the country and, being from NE, that made me wiicked pissed

I remember long ago, this guy named Hoffman, had a list of the top 2 mile times, HS and although its not cross country, he had like 100 names or maybe more?

One day, I figured that over half of the top times were from California.

It was a cool list.

California

Washington

NY

Indiana

Possibly Texas but defiantly not per capita actually nvm texas sucks, but ill just leave it here.

Then a few other states

Then

Colorado both guys and girls are very strong.

Then worst ones

NH

Oregon (I've heard they only even run track in this state)

Canada (this state may seem awful at first glance, but when you look closer you'll realize it really isn't even halfway decent, so ill leave it at last place)

Nike cross regionals assign a separate region to New York. What is more impressive is that the majority of standout runners from ny are not from the NYC area, so if you are calculating talent per capita, what does it do to the numbers if you exclude the five boroughs?

Maine is the best state. Just look at all the pros. End of thread.

You guys, this is stupid- the numbers do not lie.

The answer is Montana produces the best runners per capita, and it's not even close. A Montana runner is 50 times more likely to make it to FL Nationals than a CA runner.

MD Phan wrote:

You guys, this is stupid- the numbers do not lie.

The answer is Montana produces the best runners per capita, and it's not even close. A Montana runner is 50 times more likely to make it to FL Nationals than a CA runner.

According to flotrack it's actually texas. I'll take their word for it.

Nooooo wrote:

MD Phan wrote:

You guys, this is stupid- the numbers do not lie.

The answer is Montana produces the best runners per capita, and it's not even close. A Montana runner is 50 times more likely to make it to FL Nationals than a CA runner.

According to flotrack it's actually texas. I'll take their word for it.

http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/251948-Track-Season-on-FloTrack-2015/article/32129-Best-States-For-HS-Track-Relative-to-Size#.VbRShp8o7qA

That's almost strictly from sprints/hurdles/relays. Distance wise, they don't come close to matching their state population.

Also, looks like they don't include 1500m/3k states like Oregon, Hawaii, New York (girls), Iowa (girls) or Rhode Island in their analysis, so it's flawed from the start.

In pretty sure flotrack did their research right. Texas is #1 three times

Just like everything else thats ever measured In america, oklahoma and mississippi are always 49th and 50th on the list.

The states with the most talent are the border states. Tx n az ca

For XC the best right now are Utah, Washington, and New York, with California very close behind. Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and New Jersey make up the next tier, with Texas right behind, and with potential to make it back closer to the top where they belong.

Add in altitude for 800-3200 and Colorado would move up several spots boys and girls.

0 boys in 16,32 yet 2 world qualifiers.

1 girl in 3200 with the talent there?

Some of you have put Florida in the worst list- but you're forgetting how difficult it is to run there. Extreme heat, humidity, almost no trails or soft surfaces, and awful courses make it difficult to run high summer mileage, and consequenrlt, hard to run fast XC times. And then when runners go to qualifiers, the sudden change in conditions/competition can be overwhelming, and many people underachieve.

Even so, the state has produced some of the nation's best high school (or now college/professional) runners- the Fleuhrs, the Schapperts, Ashley Brasovan, Jenny Simpson, just to name a few. There have also been many other national qualifiers in years past.

And this year's senior class was filled with solid runners, even though there weren't any national qualifiers. I bet that many of the FL girls going out of state will thrive in better running conditions.

You guys need to factor weather in and not use 1600 and 3200 times exclusively.

This is why you see girls in Texas run 10:20 and guys run low-9:00 in March and then they're running close to the same times in May at state - their fitness improvement is negated by the 25+ degree temperature change.

We've had podium teams come from Texas at NXN and we've had recent individual champions at NXN, too.

Texas is very solid. I would guess that the SE states deal with this, too, except there might be a cultural self-selection that limits XC success - meaning sprints/jumps or football or soccer could be more important.

Of course Cali dominates XC/T&F per capita. Followed by Colorado, Washington, Arizona, ...

I live in Louisiana - why are we so bad (along with Mississippi and Alabama)?????????

Deep South Woes wrote:

I live in Louisiana - why are we so bad (along with Mississippi and Alabama)?????????

There's a pretty strong correlation between affluence and high school XC performance. As the LA public school system is absolutely pathetic, most wealthy kids go to small private schools. Unless a small school has a strong history/tradition in a certain sport, they're going to be shit at athletics. Plus, the south has the whole "running is for fags" thing going on, so overall it's just a terrible environment for producing distance runners.