2024 California HS XC CIF

Dyestat CA rankings - boys and girls teams

Yeah I didn't think so either but then I look at the DO from Bakersfield and they don't even have enough girls to field a team. The ones from last year are all 25+ minute 5K runners.

Girls:

Trabuco Hills girls team has their top 4 back from last year, and even without Guilfoile, they still have a solid 5th runner because they added a freshman (Williams) who closed the gap on that top 4 last meet, so with their full lineup they have a little bit of depth now too. I would put them ahead of JSerra.

Another reason why it would make sense to have Buchanan / Santiago Corona / Trabuco in the top 3 is because they are all in Division 1, so they will be racing each other at state and have each other be pushed by and to go after, to run the fastest times they could, so this can put them in a good position in the merge.

JSerra and Ventura will probably finish 4th and 5th in the merge, because JSerra lost Summer Wilson and neither team ended up getting the transfers that they were originally going to get, and JSerra is in Division 4, and Ventura is in Division 2. They will win their respective divisions but these teams have no other teams to really go after in their own divisions.

Boys:

I feel like almost every ranking shows Great Oak at #1 in CA, but they lost to ML King head to head.
As I mentioned before, if Westin Brown doesn’t return, their next best guy looks to be on the same level as the top runners of Arnold Beckman, Jesuit, and Mira Costa (all have a tight 1-5+ pack), and as we saw at Cool Breeze, he is similar as ML King’s 2-5 (when you count Lunetta), and obviously Zavaleta is one of the best in the state.

Buchanan boys at #3 seems a little out there. At their first meet, sure, they won it, but they had 3 “non-nationally-ranked” teams finish close to them. The guy who is supposed to be their low stick was #5 on the team that day. Not sure if they were maybe tempoing, so I’m looking forward to seeing how they do in the big field. I’d say, for now, it’s better to take Buchanan out of the top 5 and put Mira Costa in. Mira Costa finished much higher than Buchanan at CIF last year and they were missing Ian Hansen, they return 3 other guys from CIF, and they had some juniors step up from a year ago.

Abigail Errington ran a 16:46 at the Pacific-Rio Hondo Challenge yesterday. three miles but still really fast. would have been top 20 in the boys varsity race. her first race of the year I believe.

All the best teams in the northwest(CDA, Crater, Mercer Island), South(Southlake Carroll, Woodlands), Southwest(Herriman, Hamilton, Rock Canyon) are coming down to race in one our home course.

Just so you all know, if they wreck us at our home course, most likely there will be no at-larges for the California region. I get that people want to chill during the early season, but I feel like people underestimate the impact this race will have on the California region.

I don’t want pressure anyone, and it’s early season, but unfortunately one of the biggest races does happen early season.

I feel like the possibility of California getting no at-larges was already pretty widely accepted by most people after what happened at NXN last year. Quite frankly I don't think Great Oak should have even been there (Oakdale should have, but that's another topic) and San Clemente, who ran one of the best team times in Woodward history, did not have a great race.

I don't disagree with most of what you said. My only disagreement is that it's "early season" because it's not. If you haven't raced enough by then to be ready that's on you and your team.

I think Great Oak was chosen because they have made nationals every year since 2015, and before 2023, every time they were there, they placed highly, so the committee had some confidence in this decision.

San Clemente’s regular top 5 guy (Harrington) didn’t score for them at NXN, but fortunately for them, they had a good 6th runner (Gould) who scored for them, and this was his only year on varsity too.

The reason why Oakdale was not selected and Great Oak was, is because Great Oak finished higher than them in the state meet merge. It’s against the rules to select a 4th place team but not a third place team

To be honest, from what I am seeing right now, it should be 2 southwest, 1 south, 1 California.
But I don’t think that is what is going to happen.
Redonda Union, Jesuit CA, ML King(with transfers), beckman(with transfers), and Bellarmine Prep have insane talent this season. The problem is nobody will know about it outside of the California region. The teams with transfers aren’t eligible for Woodbridge, and the others aren’t racing in the big race. The only team in this list that is schedule to race outside of ca is Jesuit (and obviously they will wreck that race). But the teams they are racing aren’t going to very relevant at the national level
It’s like everyone wants to keep their cards close to them before the state meet. that strategy doesn’t help the region as a whole. It’s the less relevant teams like Millikan, Dana Hills, Trabuco Hills, Great Oak (without Westin brown) that are going out of state to race the big teams in other regions

From what I heard, Oakdale only lost in the merge by 3 points, and had a faster team time by 10 seconds. GO did win in the merge and deserved to go over Oakdale, but the real thing that stands out is that both teams didn't go. The fact that two teams were almost identical in points and team time, yet only one of the teams was selected, doesn't bode well for CA's future.

The Laguna hills invitational is tomorrow, on the boys' side we'll see full teams from Aliso Niguel, Beckman, Corona Del Mar, Mira Costa, San Clemente, and Woodbridge, among others. Dana Hills is also racing but doesn't have Noonan or Hunter entered as they seem to be opening their seasons at the Woodbridge Invitational next week.

Tomorrow, Mira Costa and Redondo Union will be competing at the Iolani invitational in Hawaii actually

That was a very challenging read.