Official Idaho HS XC 2023 Thread

Yep. And Rocky ran this course three weeks ago and CDA hasn’t. Besides, the gaps that Rocky had today may look small at the Idaho state meet, but will be large in number of placements at NXR.

CDA had a :33 1-5 gap. Rocky had a 1:13 gap. Before anyone says Landon, CDA had a 2-5 gap of :20 to Rocky’s :41. Their 2’s were virtually identical on time. Just like Sam Jensen struggled today, Lachlan May struggled. So did Wyatt Carr. At their best, CDA is still the better team by a wide margin. Rocky is also a great team. That takes nothing away from them to say that.

Also, it takes nothing away from Heemeyer to say that Stadtlander was better by a long shot yesterday. He blew by with 200 to go and crushed him.

CDA put 4 in the top 12, 5th at 16.

Rocky puts 2 in the top 10, 4 in top 15, with 4th being 15. They struggle at 5.

Boise puts 3 in the top 10. This is the prediction that was most off.

Stadtlander had a great race and a deserving champion, but in no sense is being even with someone at 200m to go and using the well known great kick “better by a long shot.”

Winning by 4 seconds would imply it wasn’t close. Landon would have had to run 15:00 to run the kick out of him. Needing to run that much faster to neutralize a kick would be a good indicator that the winning party was better by a long shot (especially yesterday in particular). Landon was not going to win that race yesterday no matter what he did and Nate was only going to lose it if he did all the work. There’s no reason for him to do that when he has a huge kick. It was savvy and the race wasn’t close in the end.

If this was on the track and Landon ran 9:00 pace for 3000m and Stadtlander sat on him until 200 to go and then won by 4 seconds in 8:56, people would say Stadtlander was the better runner that day by a long shot. It’s not that he sat and kicked. It’s that Heemeyer had 0 answer to it. With 600 to go it was clear Stadtlander was going to win.

In XC “better by a long shot” is winning by 20+ seconds. It’s a 15 minute race not a 4:10 minute race and that’s how the sport works. If it comes down to a kick at 200m in a race this long, you just can say anyone was better by a long shot,

Smoovie…..please chill with the anti Rocky posts. CDA is really tough, Rocky did a great job bringing guys along to fill the gaps left from Sainsbury, Hill, Uitdewilligen, etc. from last year. This was CDAs year from the get go, you don’t need to disrespect teams trying to beat them, that’s literally the name of the game, teams want to beat other teams.

To be fair from your end, I’d love to see you point out that all of Lachlan Mays great races have come on cupcake courses. He’s said in interviews he doesn’t like hills, so being his teams 3 or 4 is probably about right on a real XC course. If you put Rocky’s Jensen in between Tuft and Richardson like he’s been all season (16:08 at Bob Conley on the same course) then it’s a close team battle. Also, if Boises 4-5 can find a way to be closer they clearly had the best top 3 yesterday.

As an Idaho fan I hope to see 2 Idaho teams go to NXN (CDA, Rocky, or Boise) would be awesome to see for a state our size.

If it’s clear that someone was sitting and kicking and the race was never in doubt after the final climb, then I think that would qualify as being better by a large amount. Stadtlander could have gone from further out and the margin would have big bigger. It’s okay to say someone was way better on that day. Landon is still an all timer for Idaho

I’ve acknowledged Rocky is a great team and Landon is a great runner. Rocky fans, runners, parents, and other people very closely affiliated with the team have been posting all season about how they could take down CDA and downplayed their successes. They’ve also posted things like how Herriman was going to average slower at Firman than their team did last year.

Last year’s team was great. They didn’t have a 6 and they struggled at NXN. The scores were closer than it was, and they were 40+ seconds out of being in contention on two runners. They were still a great team.

This years team is a great team. CDA is better. They deserve respect. They’ve beat a lot of really good teams and have traveled to do it. Heemeyer is still a great runner. Stadtlander was just better. There’s nothing wrong with saying that. Nothing at all. I’m pretty sure people were posting last year how there was no chance that a runner was going to beat Sainsbury when he did this exact thing in track to them. Why is that any different than what Stadtlander did to Heemeyer?

One more thing- I think there’s runners that do better when they can control the race. I think that there’s a huge benefit to being in races where you aren’t clearly the second best or 8th best guy. I think it was a mistake for Rocky to not get into another very high quality race outside of Firman. They ran way better at Bob Conley when they could control it. The second that they can’t, they seem to struggle. Having multiple cracks at teams as good as CDA will only help. Iron sharpens iron.

I agree with you on a ton of what you’ve said, it just seems like every post comes with a backhanded statement.

It looked like Rocky executed a pretty solid day minus their usual number 4.
It’s been said on this thread why they don’t travel super far….team of about 120 kids and they value having every kid feel like an equal part of what they do. It’s not just about the Top 7.

I think there are some really realistic views of who these teams are that seem to be impartial.

Speed scores has posted some pretty good insight. When the ratings come out today, I imagine the updated data will show a pretty flat line for Rocky. Noe Kemper has not looked good all year and then looked way better yesterday, and I imagine that will drive his up. Kaden Helder had a great day yesterday and that will help Boise’s overall as well.

I think CDA’s will be pretty flat, just like Rocky. I think at this point, CDA and Rocky are what they are and not much is going to change on that. CDA has more room for error because they have 7 guys that can be in their top 5 on the right day.

If Boise’s top 3 run this way at NXR and Rocky struggles at all, I do think they will beat Rocky. The big question mark for Boise has been Kemper being further back all year. They have a great top 3 and that can help cover up their weakness at 4 and 5. Lucas needs to run way better at NXR than he did at Firman, Districts, and State if Rocky is going to have any chance of being competitive.

That’s fair. And I think it impacts them in races where they aren’t clearly the best team. Lucas and Jensen are not the 9th and 32nd best guys in the state. Not even close. Only three of their guys ran faster than they did at Bob Conley (for 20 seconds faster overall), and their other guys ran collectively 1:35 slower. Running in a pack and knowing how to move and race in deeper fields is very different than running efforts where you can go tempo out hard efforts in small fields. Races like Firman and State don’t necessarily ever have a rhythm if you are in 25th, 50th, 100th, etc. You can get into a rhythm in smaller races and then in the deeper fields it feels foreign.

I do think conditions were slower at State versus Bob Conley due to a few factors (a little snow on the ground, 25-30 degrees temps, and a few slight course changes). CDA is legit and averaged 15:54 versus Rocky averaging 15:50 at Bob Conley. I don’t think Rocky’s Bob Conley run was better than CDAs State run so that tells me State was a slower day/course.

That’s also fair, but 4 guys averaging 24 seconds slower tells me there’s an issue with something other than it being cold.

FWIW, I do think that if Rocky had more experience racing better teams, I think they would have won.

Cold and wind and slight route changes. Still a fast course overall, but I do think it was overall a slightly slow day. I suspect the speed ratings as a result will make the kids look a little slower than they actually ran.

But that’s not how they work. The quality of the field and how fast they ran compared to previous performances will dictate the scores pretty heavily. There are a lot of 178-180 type guys in the 15:30-15:30 range. They’ll probably bench mark it off of that, meaning Sheesley will likely be 180, Helder and Ringert around 183-184, Heemeyer around 185-186, Stadtlander around 187.

That would put Cody Lucas around 176, Tuft around 171, etc.

Nelah Roberts would be around 145 in that scenario.

Speed ratings are also heavily influenced by past races on the same course.