Who's the best inner city cross country team?

liamjamieson wrote:

Loyola has an incredibly diverse socio-economic class range with many of the kids receiving partial if not total financial aid. While not all kids are, many great Loyola runners have most certainly been "inner-city".

In fact, many of the names on that list were on some form of financial aid, and or from a few blocks away from the school.

I think BC high and Brookline may be a stretch there. Brockton won states back in 2006 before falling off the radar shortly after but, they're making a slow comeback to the top. Out in Western Mass, Holyoke went from being a joke to one of the best schools in the state.

I think this depends on definition. Here in Philly, Masterman is a decent school that has at times over the past decade or so been in the top 5 at the PIAA state meet for both guys and girls. That said, they are a magnet school that draws only the VERY top kids to the school, so they have a different set of expectations and parental involvement than almost every other Philly school. Before that, Central and Overbrook had been able to hold their own as middle of the pack schools statewide. At times they were very good and would win some invitationals, at others, middle of the pack. Now, neither of those teams are particularly strong even if both have sent kids to the State meet as individuals the last few years.

Franklin High School in south Seattle is the definition of an inner city school (metal detectors and all).

They were top 10 in WA this year with their #1 being out of commission at the state meet.

Mr. OAR wrote:

I think BC high and Brookline may be a stretch there. Brockton won states back in 2006 before falling off the radar shortly after but, they're making a slow comeback to the top. Out in Western Mass, Holyoke went from being a joke to one of the best schools in the state.

Brockton is certainly a dumpy city, but not really the picture of inner city, many parks in and around the area. Holyoke is similar in that it has access to some great areas to train in.

mass whole wrote:

Mr. OAR wrote:

I think BC high and Brookline may be a stretch there. Brockton won states back in 2006 before falling off the radar shortly after but, they're making a slow comeback to the top. Out in Western Mass, Holyoke went from being a joke to one of the best schools in the state.

Brockton is certainly a dumpy city, but not really the picture of inner city, many parks in and around the area. Holyoke is similar in that it has access to some great areas to train in.

It seems that to be considered inner city a school needs to be both within a large city with little access to parks or decent places to run and poor.

Mr. OAR wrote:

I think BC high and Brookline may be a stretch there. Brockton won states back in 2006 before falling off the radar shortly after but, they're making a slow comeback to the top. Out in Western Mass, Holyoke went from being a joke to one of the best schools in the state.

Agree. BC high and Brookline don't have much of a presence on the state level. Lowell is a powerhouse and is always dominant on the state scene. I've trained with the Holyoke guys and they got so good because they gained an absolutely amazing coach. Just shows you how a coach can turn a program around!

Pappy wrote:

Whitney Young in Chicago has been pretty good lately.

I'll give another vote to Whitney Young in Chicago.

In my era ... wrote:

In my era, Cretin-Durham Hall, Saint Paul, MN was a solid city XC. The male team went to state numerous times.

Private schools that recruit in the suburbs hardly qualify as an “inner city” school.

Definition wrote:

In my era ... wrote:

In my era, Cretin-Durham Hall, Saint Paul, MN was a solid city XC. The male team went to state numerous times.

Private schools that recruit in the suburbs hardly qualify as an “inner city” school.

Recruiting? How does it work for Cretin-Durham? Bags of cash? A high end condo dt Saint Paul? A $125,000 BMW? Are kids of wealthy families get a free education at Cretin-Durham? I know people say the same thing about Convent of the Visitation School, M.H. regarding their S&D team.

Pittsburghteam wrote:

I went to Taylor allderdice. We are an inner city school. The girls team has not been awesome lately but we were piaa runner ups when I went to school there and the boys team is currently pretty decent.

I'd also add that Winchester Thurston (won PIAAs in '16, 4th in '17 and runner up this year) and Oakland Catholic (2nd in '16 and 3rd in '17 in PIAA Class AAA) are both very urban locations, located right in the city core.

In the mid- to late 1970s New York City public school cross-country (and track as well) was dominated by black and Hispanic teams from Brooklyn Tech and Westinghouse, schools that were in the then-sketchy neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn, respectively.

Hickory wrote:

I'm always amazed thinking about the Hammond High team of Rudy Chapa, Carey Pinkowski and Tim Keough (all sub-9) running through the streets of Hammond and loops around a tiny city park. I think those 3 went 1-2-3 at state cross country but the team "only" managed a 2nd place.

Sports Illustrated ran an article about that trio in 1975:

Hammond must have been amazing at the time. I remember seeing in the "Where are they Going?" in Track and Field News that they had a 4th guy at 9:09. Their 5th man must have been terrible for them to ever lose.

PhillyDude wrote:

I think this depends on definition. Here in Philly, Masterman is a decent school that has at times over the past decade or so been in the top 5 at the PIAA state meet for both guys and girls. That said, they are a magnet school that draws only the VERY top kids to the school, so they have a different set of expectations and parental involvement than almost every other Philly school. Before that, Central and Overbrook had been able to hold their own as middle of the pack schools statewide. At times they were very good and would win some invitationals, at others, middle of the pack. Now, neither of those teams are particularly strong even if both have sent kids to the State meet as individuals the last few years.

I go to Masterman. For a small public high school in an urban school district with not enough funding, Masterman's xc teams have been improbably successful. The boys team placed 2nd in the state meet (piaa) a few years ago. We have a good amount of alumni who ran/are running for a college team (a lot of D3 guys) and most years have had at least one or two guys around or under 4:30/10.

Masterman has a really strong running culture, which is unusual for any high school - not just an "inner city" one (in a lot of high schools, even ones with strong programs, it's probably football or basketball). Xc is probably the most talked about (and by far the most successful) team at the school, and its also the most popular. Almost a quarter of the entire school went out for the track team last spring.

I think the main reason urban high schools, including ones like Masterman which are good but far from incredible, don't produce the same number of 'elite' high schoolers (4:15?) as, say, huge suburban high schools or private schools like Loyola is not because they simply don't have as good runners, but because of lack of resources and lack of funding. The programs at schools like Masterman would improve dramatically with better resources (we have to train in the parking lot sometimes because there's nowhere else for us to go, for example - imagine if we had better access to a track), which translates to better coaching and better performances.

Cut the sh!t people. No way no how has the term "inner city" ever meant a private school. Ever. LeBron James is from the inner city, but he did not go to an inner city high school.

The best inner city team west of the Mississippi is Long Beach Poly (CA), track and cross country. They don't even have an all-weather facility on campus!

CDH is a city school by location only. Examine their demographics when compared to the St. Paul public schools and there is a significant difference. Their current conference affiliation mirrors their demographic, which is suburban.

Come on. WT costs over $28k a year at the high school level. OC is $15k. These may be inner-city located, but their demographics aren't really representative of Pittsburgh. If that's the case, we can add Penn Charter and Germantown Friends from Philly to this list (though PC has only gotten good with the females the last 2 years, and GFS seems to have gone down a bit since Hewitt left).

Yeahbut wrote:

Come on. WT costs over $28k a year at the high school level. OC is $15k. These may be inner-city located, but their demographics aren't really representative of Pittsburgh. If that's the case, we can add Penn Charter and Germantown Friends from Philly to this list (though PC has only gotten good with the females the last 2 years, and GFS seems to have gone down a bit since Hewitt left).

Weldon’s question was simply about which inner city xc teams are the best. If you want to change the question to “which inner city schools that properly reflect the demographics of the inner city areas in which they are located have the best xc teams?”, that’s fine. But at least acknowledge that you are changing the question.