Who's the best inner city cross country team?

I shall. He also said we were free to figure out what "inner-city" meant. And I'm sorry, but paying for an elite institution that happens to be located within the confines of Pittsburgh proper instead of being out in say Wexford or Mt. Lebanon, just doesn't cut it as "inner-city" for me.

I don’t understand why people are interpreting “inner city” to mean “poor.” In pretty much every major American city, the central core of the city is affluent. It’s the outlying neighborhoods that are poor.

Basically, cities develop in concentric rings: rich inner city, surrounded by poor neighborhoods, which are in turn surrounded by wealthy suburbs, which are then surrounded by middle and lower class suburbs. Even in a city like Philly which is mostly ghetto, Center City is relatively affluent.

Inner cities are places like Manhattan and Center City Philly. Ghettos are places like the South Bronx, Compton, and North Philly, which are pretty much never in the inner city.

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).

I live a block from Penn Charter. East Falls is a suburban neighborhood. Nothing inner city about it by any conceivable definition. Not demographically. Not in terms of actual development patterns.

Not sure how it would qualify as “inner city located.”

Cambridge has historically been a pretty tough place outside of the Harvard/MIT dominated parts of town. That is changing but Cambridge XC is certainly a good nominee for this question. In MA, Brockton could also fit although it’s less central geographically.

wejo wrote:

XC season is almost over at the high school ranks and now that I'm a NY I'm more aware all the top kids seem to be out in the country or the suburbs.

So what's the best innercity XC team in the country? Inner city can mean a lot of different things so feel free to define it how you want. Feel free to make this historical. Are city kids anywhere doing well in XC?

What a great question. It gets to the heart of the matter of “what’s the most important decision in your life?” Answer: who your parents are and that one is all LUCK. Note: it’s not the only important decision, just the most important one.

Lebron wouldn’t have made the NBA if he was 5 ft tall, but because he’s 6-8 he’s one of the greatest ever. The most reliable predictor of your socio economic status in adulthood? The socio economic status of your parents. Would Letsrun exist if the Johnson twins were born to an inner city family? Probably not. When people say they got where they are because of hard work, undoubtedly that’s partially true. But a ton of it is situational context that may have been gifted to you.

Anyone who is against high tax rates for the upper income brackets doesn’t appreciate how much of their income was gifted to them. Go back and look at tax rates from raegan’s first term. Let’s go back.

I went to Cornell and Harvard and currently work for a vocational school group. Every day I am humbled by the strength and resolve and amount of adversity our students overcome. If I was born into their contexts I have no doubt I’d be sitting in their shoes. Letsrun site visitors are a fortunate group. Everyone if you can, go adopt a family for Christmas. Because as Wejo implied, if you were born into an inner city environment your life would be a lot different.

As for the question, Whitney Young is a solid inner city program as someone else said.

Yes, Cambridge is it. Also had the best sprint teams in New England. Oddly, they were awful in football (for a big school). Many fancy colleges were built in/around slums (Yale, Columbia, Penn, Duke, USC etc.).

Minneapolis Patrick Henry has had a long history of cross country success. They have finished top 10 in their conference every year for the past 50 years, often beating out rival Minneapolis Edison.

mwh wrote:

Yes, Cambridge is it. Also had the best sprint teams in New England. Oddly, they were awful in football (for a big school). Many fancy colleges were built in/around slums (Yale, Columbia, Penn, Duke, USC etc.).

The only problem with cambridge is that they are not good. It has been eons since they had a good team. Same with Brockton, both bad teams in a state where there are no good teams to begin with.

You’re right! Masterman has it way better than schools like South Philly and Rox., but I wasn’t comparing us to schools like that. I was comparing Masterman to large suburban high schools (even if we have the money and influence to make our schools more similar to them, we won’t have the facilities.) And yes, we do run in Fairmount Park. We’ve had to use the parking lot or run around the block maybe 3 or 4 times - sorry, I sort of just put that in there for exaggeration. You’re right that some philly schools don’t even have a park or any real places to run. We have it a lot, lot better than a lot of schools, who don’t have the parent involvement/home and school org. that we do, which does so much to support the school. I get this.

And of course we’re successful because of the factors you describe, I don’t disagree at all. I never had him as a coach, but from what I’ve heard, St. Clair was legendary. Comf has continued the great coaching. And everything else you said that’s conducive to success - the culture (which I mentioned), the high expectations, smart students - because we have all of this, it’s not unlikely at all that we’ve been so successful. (You’re totally right - resources aren’t everything- these things are important too!) What I should have said earlier is that what’s ‘improbable’ is that an urban high school like Masterman even exists. Most city schools, like the ones you mentioned, would kill for the resources we have. Masterman is unusual for a city school because of the students it has.

I think we’re agreeing with each other, just with a lot more words.

Anyway, thanks about Pubs. Everyone raced really well. It was the closest race I’ve been in - no one was even sure who had won until the award ceremony.

Inner City definition from Websters : the usually older, poorer, and more densely populated central section of a city.

My wife was a teacher at inner city school that was a Title 1 school. At least 85% of the kids were on free or reduced lunch.

Just out of curiosity, had those 7 guys ever lined up together other than on that day at Leagues?

One other thing that holds you back...the rest of the league. You go to a dual/tri-meet out in the suburbs and you've got multiple kids from each team running the times you guys are in the 16 & 32, which pushes those kids. You don't have that at a single Pub meet. If there were better competition, week in and out, you and the few other kids who actually are moderately decent by most standards across the country, would get better. As it is now, most distance runners are training but not getting much (competitive) racing in until the League Championship/District races.

Collegiate HS in the upper west side of Manhattan has had some good cross country programs (boys only school). Denver West was really good back in 2002-2003 time frame (public school on the west side of Denver) but as many people have stated I guess it depends on your definition of inner city.

I'llPlay wrote:

Just out of curiosity, had those 7 guys ever lined up together other than on that day at Leagues?

One other thing that holds you back...the rest of the league. You go to a dual/tri-meet out in the suburbs and you've got multiple kids from each team running the times you guys are in the 16 & 32, which pushes those kids. You don't have that at a single Pub meet. If there were better competition, week in and out, you and the few other kids who actually are moderately decent by most standards across the country, would get better. As it is now, most distance runners are training but not getting much (competitive) racing in until the League Championship/District races.

I think all 7 had - if not, then definitely 6 out of the 7, however this is pretty much only at the regular season public league meets (except for the one invitational we raced this season). It’s interesting, though, that at least 4 guys were racing at Pubs for the first time, either because they were a freshman or they took one of the three spots that were seniors last year.

And yeah, you’re right about the rest of league - the 16 and the 32 are dead at most public league meets. I think the majority of the 32s at south Philly meets last season were either completely just masterman kids, or all masterman + one guy from SLA or something. That’s hardly a race.

Btw, what year did you graduate? Just curious. I’m a sophomore

Also, another thing: we raced a different set of 7 at pubs, districts, and states. We switched our #7 and #8 at districts (he ran a faster time in the jv race than our 7th guy), but then ended up having our alternate run at states because our 3rd guy couldn’t come. I know it’s not that uncommon to change the lineup in between races, but it made a difference, especially losing our #3 at states.

going faster miles an hour wrote:

On the more historical side...

In Wisconsin, Milwaukee Riverside won sixteen state championships between 1913 and 1936. (Sidenote: going even further back, Riverside alum Alvin Kraenzlein won gold medals in the 60 meter dash, 110 meter high hurdles, 200 meter low hurdles, and long jump at the 1900 Olympics, setting Olympic records in each event. Kraenzlein is credited with perfecting and popularizing the modern style of hurdling with a straight lead leg.)

In Minnesota, Minneapolis Southwest won seventeen state championships between 1946 and 1973, while Minneapolis South won four consecutive championships from 1988-1991. More recently, Hassan Mead is a Minneapolis South alum.

https://www.wiaawi.org/Sports/BoysCrossCountry/History.aspxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Minnesota_State_High_School_League_State_Championships_(Fall)#Boys_Cross_Country_Running

Southwest and South used to be dominant in the past. South even won state with 29 points in 1991.

Now MPLS Washburn is the most dominant team in their conference. They are all in 6AA aka section of death now. But Washburn made it to state and got second there in 2015. They’ve gotten that far after getting last in the section meet in 2007, getting dead last in that meet in 2008, not even having a complete scoring team in that meet in 2009, getting last in that meet in 2010, and getting 3rd to last in that meet in 2011. They made such good progress within a decade!

unbelieavabletheignoranceonhere wrote:

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!

Is this a thing? We won state with a track that was cinder but not kept up. Didn't even think of it as a big deal besides the fact we didn't have home meets.

Just south of hard scrabble Brockton MA a prep school has quietly built a 22 yr xc and track dynasty for girls . Thayer Academy. Great coach. No indoor track whatsoever, no hills. No losses in 22 yrs........

Historically for Texas it would be Dallas Highland Park. They've won several 5A and 4A state titles. Extremely wealthy single school district not far from downtown.

Now if you mean low socioeconomic, then that is a different ballgame.

smugmug123 wrote:

Just south of hard scrabble Brockton MA a prep school has quietly built a 22 yr xc and track dynasty for girls . Thayer Academy. Great coach. No indoor track whatsoever, no hills. No losses in 22 yrs........

Don't know how this could be defined as "inner city" in any sense of the word. Way outside of Boston (last stop on the red line FTW), very affluent clientele (the campus basically looks like a small liberal arts college).

Not trying to be overly critical, but I'd love to hear why you think this would answer the question.