At this time, no Centennial or Mountain View at all, Eagle has a complete team but no Petersen, Porter, Culpepper or Taggart but does have James Anderson. It doesn’t seem like it will be as good of a meet as it looked like last week.
This is a fairly big deal. Provided he looks good, he’s a varsity guy and probably pushes Pelham to not scoring for Eagle. His time for Eagle at Jimmy Driscoll last year would have improved their team time by 32 seconds.
Big run from tuft: 33 second win, 3 seconds slower than what Stadtlander ran the year he got 9th at NXR.
Rocky had their 6th and 7th fastest sub 16:30 which I don’t think has happened in a long time on any course for them.
Still need to see the complete squads go head to head before we can make a value judgment on the top teams behind CDA
Just an aside, Caldwell runs really fast early in the year every year and sometimes the times run on it don’t necessarily translate to what gets run later in the year. AJ Ringert ran 15:44 there the same year Stadtlander ran 15:08 but got 8th at NXR. He also lost to Lucas by 22 seconds at that race but beat him by 27 seconds at state. Caldwell isn’t always the best barometer of how a season is going to go.
Good data, consistent program (2022 team finished 3rd at NXR, 2023 team finished 4th at NXR, and last year they finished 3rd at NXR). Them and Boise both look to be up there in the NW on the boys side in what could be a deep NW boys year.
Jimmy Driscoll and Caldwell looked like some good competition for early season. Idaho is shaping up nicely! Farragut and Cardinal Classic on Saturday will be more good ones!
Good data, consistent program (2022 team finished 3rd at NXR, 2023 team finished 4th at NXR, and last year they finished 3rd at NXR). Them and Boise both look to be up there in the NW on the boys side in what could be a deep NW boys year.
Jimmy Driscoll and Caldwell looked like some good competition for early season. Idaho is shaping up nicely! Farragut and Cardinal Classic on Saturday will be more good ones!
I do like the idea of league meets from fan perspective because we’re 3 weeks into the season and Rocky has raced 3 times, Boise will have raced twice, Mountain View twice, Timberline twice, and most of Eagle only once.
It’s hard to get an idea of what a team is until a few races in and we won’t see that for Eagle until Woodbridge or Vallivue or possibly even Hole in the Wall. I think we could guess at Eagle easily getting 2nd last night.
Rocky by contrast looks like they will race their varsity boys nearly every week- Hermiston, Eagle Island, Vallivue, Inland Empire, a tri meet, districts and then state. The top Eagle guys will probably race 6 times in the regular season. It looks like the Rocky boys will race that many races by Vallivue.
I feel like Boise and Rocky will be 4/5 in the Northwest and Eagle is going to be a better version of what Mountain View has been, which is the 4th best team but they will have a lot more depth at 4-7 than Mountain View did. It was encouraging to see Pelham run a lot faster at Caldwell. I would think that Culpepper and Taggart would have run under 16 there and Petersen and Porter would have been right on top of it. That would have given a score around 42-60 for Rocky and Eagle. I don’t think they make the jump to the same level as Boise and Rocky unless Anderson comes back and isn’t super rusty or racing his way back into shape.
League meets would be awesome for Idaho to continue to grow excitement for the sport. The current setup is causing kids to think about fast times more than racing.
Different teams have different philosophies and have shown different improvement curves as the season wears on. The Idaho XC 2023 thread had pretty detailed breakdowns on speed ratings and it was pretty apparent that Rocky Mountain runs very fast early in the season and maintains it with small gains throughout the season. Mountain View had larger, but still small gains over the course of the season but regressed right at the end of the season. Boise had moderate gains. Eagle had the largest of those schools. Those trends may also not hold this season.
If I recall correctly, Mountain View hits a lot of speed work early. I've heard that they have already run mile reps at or faster than race pace. Rocky has historically run lots of long tempo work that's a lot closer to threshold and has hit a good amount of work at race pace at this point in the season. Boise usually starts race pace stuff around the first or second race. Eagle is pretty heavy into just threshold work until the mid point of the season.
Some data points to consider- last year, Jens Knutsen narrowly beat Goggins, Kurtz and Thomas at Vallivue Scramble (a combined 11 seconds) and lost to Ben Jensen and Koda. Sheesley lost to Cody Lucas. 6 weeks later, Knutsen is 6th at the state meet and beats those guys by a combined 50 seconds, Ben Jensen and Koda are way back as only Koda gets top 20, and Sheesley beats Cody Lucas by 22 seconds, with a 25 second swing from the first race. The year before, Boise trails Rocky by :42 on team time at Bob Firman, and at state they actually are :09 faster than Rocky. They beat Boise by 9 points at Firman with just Rocky, Boise, Eagle, Timberline, and Centennial. They beat them by 3 points at State.
Likewise, Johnny Culpepper is the 12th District III guy at Jimmy Driscoll last year. He finishes 12th at the state meet. The year before, Thomas Stevens from Eagle gets 21st at Caldwell, running 16:41. Maxwell Taggart runs 16:56 for 27th. Stevens was behind Rocky's 9th runner if Heemeyer runs. Taggart was narrowly ahead of Rocky's 10th runner. They finish 21st and 27th at the state meet, with Stevens now behind Rocky's 4th runner by 11 seconds instead of the 37 seconds at Caldwell and Taggart also jumps up to ahead of Rocky's 5th runner and is now 20 seconds behind instead of 48 seconds. AJ Ringert has a 49 second swing against Cody Lucas from Caldwell to the state meet, expands his gap against Richardson from 20 seconds to 49 seconds, Sam Jensen from 21 seconds to 1:16, etc.
Gaps are going to narrow as teams get more into their training blocks and some gaps will expand. It would have been nice to have Eagle's varsity boys as data points in this race to see if the trends continue. We'll see Rocky and Boise at the Eagle Island Invitational and then maybe Eagle and Rocky at Vallivue.
Of course, CDA will move to 1 after this weekend. Sandpoint might jump Eagle. The only big missing name is Anderson which would drop Eagle's time to 1:57:53.
Each team carries their own philosophy, and progressions will be different.
Speaking of, fun seeing the Meridian boys win 4th for the boys at Caldwell with big Personal Records as everyone seems to count them out with the new controversial Head XC Coach. Team is very small and seems to be the case there… Working with what they got. Ryden (5) & Salle (7) are back to the Top 10 Sophomores in the District as of now.
In general, tons of PRs that meet for most Teams there. It’s getting interesting. Rocky’s Tuft will be hard to beat this season. Looks strong.
Each team carries their own philosophy, and progressions will be different.
Speaking of, fun seeing the Meridian boys win 4th for the boys at Caldwell with big Personal Records as everyone seems to count them out with the new controversial Head XC Coach. Team is very small and seems to be the case there… Working with what they got. Ryden (5) & Salle (7) are back to the Top 10 Sophomores in the District as of now.
In general, tons of PRs that meet for most Teams there. It’s getting interesting. Rocky’s Tuft will be hard to beat this season. Looks strong.
They are definitely looking better than I thought they would. The 4th place finish is nice, but that turns to 7th with Boise and Centennial there and Eagle running possibly even one more varsity boy, let alone all 4.
The bigger story is how close they are to both Timberline and Mountain View.
Eagle has a high ceiling based on all their fire power. It should be CDA, then a fight between Boise, Rocky, and Eagle based on what everyone can bring to the table.
Maybe I’m missing it but what exactly has Eagle done to be talked about like the are the 4th team?
I would boil the key argument for Eagle down to one thing. Their top 7 order is some mix of Taggart, Culpepper, Petersen, and Porter in the top 4, then either Anderson or Pelham for the 5th and 6th spots. Their big deal would be that their 3 and 4 spots are on paper some of the stronger ones in the state. Those two spots will be one of these marks: 9:33, 4:22, 9:38 (converted from Simplot), or 12th at state cross.
Combined with the fact that they think their freshman boy will score for them, that means that Anderson and Pelham will be 6 and 7 at the end of the season.
They have way more firepower than any team outside of Rocky, Boise and CDA.
Good data, consistent program (2022 team finished 3rd at NXR, 2023 team finished 4th at NXR, and last year they finished 3rd at NXR). Them and Boise both look to be up there in the NW on the boys side in what could be a deep NW boys year.
Jimmy Driscoll and Caldwell looked like some good competition for early season. Idaho is shaping up nicely! Farragut and Cardinal Classic on Saturday will be more good ones!
Rocky by contrast looks like they will race their varsity boys nearly every week- Hermiston, Eagle Island, Vallivue, Inland Empire, a tri meet, districts and then state. The top Eagle guys will probably race 6 times in the regular season. It looks like the Rocky boys will race that many races by Vallivue.
I feel like Boise and Rocky will be 4/5 in the Northwest and Eagle is going to be a better version of what Mountain View has been, which is the 4th best team but they will have a lot more depth at 4-7 than Mountain View did. It was encouraging to see Pelham run a lot faster at Caldwell. I would think that Culpepper and Taggart would have run under 16 there and Petersen and Porter would have been right on top of it. That would have given a score around 42-60 for Rocky and Eagle. I don’t think they make the jump to the same level as Boise and Rocky unless Anderson comes back and isn’t super rusty or racing his way back into shape.
I’m not sure why they waste time and money traveling to these smaller meets. Blowing out the Caldwell invite, no real competition in the Hermiston invite, should bank some of the travel money to a bigger invite farther away. Just my 2 cents! Especially for a team that has been faltered for their inability to travel
I wouldn’t call Rocky Mt consistently competing well at State and NXR “faltering.” Let’s support our Idaho teams that are building quality programs (CDA, Boise, Rocky, and a few more).