NXN 2023 Way too early preview: Dawn of a new Era

The second best team at Bob Conley was Star Valley, which looked worse compared to normal due to their top runner finishing in 19th (9th at Firman). If he finishes close to his teammate like he normally does, Rocky wins that meet 31-45. Still a good victory, but Star Valley is a team that lost to Boise 34-84 at Cardinal Classic. The third place team was Highland, and I don't think they'll trophy at state. Rocky Mountain has run in one meet that they haven't been able to control from the front and they had speed ratings of 187, 171, 169, 165, 163. Their next two races will have fields of around 90 kids each.

The biggest thing to point out about the size and quality of fields that Rocky Mountain has raced this year is that if you took the place of every single boy that raced in the elite section at Firman and combined all of their other finishes in other meets, they would have an equal or lower number for combined points total vs Firman finish (4 vs 4 for Heemeyer, 16 vs 46 for Lucas, 14 vs 38 for Tuft, 60 vs 66 for Jensen, 62 vs 72 for Richardson, 76 vs 100 for Kurtz). They might have raced a few meets with a lot of schools, but outside of Firman, they have raced complete varsity squads that have a good shot to trophy at the 5A state meet a grand total of once this entire season. If you include Firman, that total goes to 2. They have actually raced a lower number of boys that have broken 18 in their varsity sections at those meets (183) than they raced at Firman (210). I doubt there's another 5A school that can make that claim. That is a remarkably weak schedule.

CDA has raced 499 guys that have broken 18 in their meets, and 329 outside of their premier meet, for comparison.

I'm going to correct myself. If you include Firman, that number goes to 3 (Mountain View).

The team that got 3rd at Firman and beat them by 25 points just lost 21-99 to American Fork for 3rd place at their section of their divisional meet and would have been 6th place overall in the merge. IDK that losing to the team that is the 6th or 7th best 6A school in Utah is a great resume builder.

Here is my complete analysis of woodward park boy times, I can do girls another time

Woodward Park is one of the best data sets in the country. It has been raced on by more runners than any other course in the country. It is also an extremely consistent course. The surface is always the same and the temperatures are rarely an issue. Every race at Woodward Park is comparable to any other race in Woodward Park. It has been tested more than any other course in the country, so being on an all-time list for woodward, is something great.
It is a course that is run a lot every year, 28 invitationals in California were held there last year. All the best teams in California run the course twice a year (Clovis Invitational, State Championships). The course was used as a qualifying course for the footlocker west regionals throughout the 1980s. It was used for California state championships since 1987.
For the results of 2023 -
- California is always consistently good but this year teams don’t appear as strong as 2015, 2018-2019. This year seems to be more comparable to years such as 2014 and 2017. Assuming the teams don’t improve from now to the state meet, expect only 1 California team to break into the top 10, and another to be around 12-13th.
- California individuals are insane this year. 5 guys are in the 31 best all-time
California boys- team all-time rank(placement at nxn)
2010- 5(1st),27(16th),39(7th)
2011- 32(14th),39(4th)
2012- 8(1st)
2013- 13(9th),52(16th)
2014- 17(7th),33(10th),37(20th)
2015- 4(1st),9(3rd)
2016- 38(6th)
2017- 14(6th),28(15th),47(9th)
2018- 7(2nd),10(6th),20(9th),21(11th)
2019- 3(1st),6(2nd),11(8th)
2021- 1(1st),58(6th)
2022- 2(1st),26(6th),43(7th),66(16th)
2023 - 15(dana hills),42(great oak),47(oakdale) - at the clovis invitational.
California boy individuals woodward park top 15 all-time and their other credentials
1st German Fernandez 14:24 - ran on a hurt foot at the footlocker championships, but was able to run 4:01/8:35 double at the state meet (2 hours apart).
2nd Leo Young 14:26 - ran 3:38 1500, 1st in US U20 race, 16th place at world athletics U20 national championships
3rd Colin Sahlman 14:27 - ran 8:33 3200, 3:56 mile
4th Lex Young 14:28 - ran 8:35 3200, 13:34 track 5k
5th Nico Young 14:29 - ran 7:56 3k indoors, 1st nxn by a very large margin 14:52 - wet nxn course - in an interview second place methner whom went 15:06 at nxn 15:08 to win footlocker was asked if he thought he could beat nico young on a better day, his response, "no way that kid is on another level than me."
6th Leo Daschbach 14:31 - sub 4 miler
7th Anthony Fast Horse - 14:33 - ???
8th Marc Davis - 14:38 - olympian
9th Eric Reynolds - 14:39 - 14:35 to dominate footlocker
10th Bryan Dameworth - 14:39 -
11th Jay Marden - 14:40 - won footlocker 14:53
12th Aaron Salhman - 14:42 - won nxn 2022
13th Emmanuel Perez - 14:43 - ???
14th Phillip Rocha - 14:43 - 2nd footlocker 15:07
15th Amaar Moussa - 14:43 - 4th nxn
16th Matt Strangio - 14:44 - 4th nxn
17th Evan Noonan - 14:45 - ???
Other Notable runners and their personal best at the woodward park -
Blake Haney - 15:09 - 2nd at NXN, won Arcadia 3200
Estevan De La Rosa - 15:05-15:03 - 2nd at NXN, 4th NXN.
Liam Anderson - 14:55 - 1st at NXN

My race conversion for woodward park compared to other courses is as follows - 14:40 Woodward Park - 14:15 Huntsville -> 14:20 Mt Sac -> 14:30 Woodbridge

Meant 13:40 woodbridge not 14:30 lol

I disagree, Herriman blew southlake out of the water handily at Woodbridge

They ran Bob Firman to prepare for NXR and they went to Bob Conley to prepare for State. It seems like the focus was to keep their entire team of 115+ together this season and prepare for those two meets at the end of the season. It's obvious they weren't building some sort of arbitrary resume.

“We’ll beat no one and stamp our feet when we don’t get a berth after finishing third at NXR.”

How is it arbitrary to race and beat other good schools? If you don’t beat anyone of note, then how does the selection committee know how you stack up?

I wish Californians and people on the west coast would stop complaining so much about milesplit. So what? They are doing the best they can and yes they might be a little east coast biased, while on the other-hand dyestat is more west coast bias (but nobody complains about that).

Now because of all the complaining they didn't do any coverage Clovis invitational. That sucks. Hope they can rehire a reporter so they can go back to doing some more coverage in California. Some of us still pay money for their service

They should know how you stack up based off of your performances at state and NXR. Having mid season wins means nothing unless you are at least pretty good at those two meets.

Rocky Mountain made an insane amount of noise after not getting picked last year. By your logic, they shouldn’t have because they didn’t perform at NXR.

Mid season wins at bad meets don’t have much meaning. They have a lot of meaning at big meets do, especially if you have an off day at NXR.

You really expect the selection committee to go through the schedule of each 3rd and 4th place team for each gender and try to determine if they are good or not based on the garbage meets they won and dominated?

Not even entirely sure where you are going with all this.

1. Rocky dominated their state meet, and lost by 50 points to a team ranked #7 in the nation at the time, and by 28 points to a team ranked 4th in the nation at the time. That's like getting 4th or worst case scenario, 5th at Woodbridge, yet nobody thinks those teams aren't national caliber.

2. Agree that wins at bad meets don't mean anything, but disagree that big meets mean much. Head to head matchups should be ~10-20% of the equation when giving out at larges, unless a team was demonstratably sick (or something of that nature) at their NXR.

3. No? What? When did I ever say that, or anything like that?

In this segment, they were talking about the top 4 teams in the Northwest but Crater wasn’t mentioned. Did they assume that there was no chance that Tostenson and Hellmann were going to be healthy come NXR?

milesplit.com

On The Line: Coeur d'Alene Is Legit, Manhattan Is Up & More

Cory Mull

Check in with another episode of On The Line, which aired on October 10.

Link:www.milesplit.com/articles/340095/on-t...

The at-large decisions are tough every year. Ofcourse Rocky was disappointed with not being selected, just like the other 4-5 teams that had worthwhile reasons to be upset. Like Toonesh stated, they finished behind Crater and Jesuit who were very strong all year and both finished in the Top 5 at NXN. The past is in the past, I'm sure a handful of 3rd place teams at different regions will experience the same feeling Rocky and others felt last year. It's just a part of the sport with the current qualifying process. It's exciting that our sport has a true National Championship and it is a challenge to get to each year. That's competitive greatness as it finest.

Someone gets screwed over every other year through the large selections. I remember when California got screwed over in 2015 and 2018.

The harsh reality is that it is also going to happen this year. 2 at large should go to southwest, 1 at large should go to california, 1 at large should go to northwest, 1 at large should go to northeast. That is 5 possible top 10 teams, and 1 will be left out of nxn.

My best advice? Build up the best resume possible going into NXR, and do you absolute best at NXR. If your performance at NXR is solid that means you will probably go in.

Jason Parra is going over to the northeast's Manhattan Invite. If he comes back with some insane speed rating, then we know northeast is overrated. This will be interesting

It’s insane to me that there is this much talk about a team who has a guy who has run a 163 speed rating three times and no faster as their number 5, has a 171 level number 3, a number 2 that has never run closer than 10 points to his season’s best speed ranking on the NXR qualifying course in 3 attempts (has not cracked 170 on this course), and that has lost to a team that won’t even sniff the top 5 at the Utah State meet, much less NXR SW.

Rocky Mountain parents, runners, and probably coaches are getting on here and talking about how awesome they are. Their haters are getting on here talking about how they aren’t that good. The reality is that they are a great state level team and a good regional team and will probably be top 4 at NXR NW but they appear to be far from a qualifying team.

If head to head only counts for 10-20% of the equation, then every team that can dominate their state meet should just duck competition all year and can point to their bad to mid level quality meet wins as how dominant they are. Teams that think they are NXR should race schedules that give themselves a shot to prove it. If the coaches want to pitch it as keeping the team together, figure out how to travel to a quality meet or run the risk of getting your butt handed to you at your home course at the only truly big, quality invite on your schedule.

My name is Craig Dunn from Dana
Hills High School in CA and I have been coaching at Dana Hills since 2000, Dana
has been on all sides of the spectrum for NXN’s from top two with an automatic berth,
3rd and left out, 4th and got in. I have lived it all and will agree
that the process is not perfect, but tell me some object process that is. I can
appreciate that Nike has allowed this opportunity for teams across the US the
chance to find out who truly is the best team/individual in the nation. They do
an amazing job of not just promoting their event, but making teams/individuals
feel important as they are the future of our sport.
For those that don’t know,
regional reps communicate to schools about expectations, and the process that
it takes to make NXN’s. CA’s regional rep let it be known in our conference
call (that included all NXN hopefuls), that the committee selecting at-large
teams will be looking at what teams did in a high pressure situation against
other high caliber teams. We were informed that if you are a 3rd/4th
place team in your region, you should better your odds of being selected by
competing and doing well against other high rated teams.
Once again, the process is not
perfect, but the rules/standards are put out there.
Just My 2 Cents (which is probably
worth less),
Craig Dunn

I think that apart of Belen, Southeast is weak this year.
I remember McCallie was ranked as high as 7th nationally in some preseason rankings. I never thought they were going to be that good; they aren’t now, but now I’m a little surprised with how far they are from the #2 team in the Southeast given how close they were to Belen last year and that they only lost 2 seniors.