Official Idaho HS XC 2023 Thread

Dang, the competition for Rocky’s top 7 spots will be insane.
Should be interesting to see who gets them.
They lost 3 varsity guys but they have so much depth

What 5A teams have run time trials so far this year?

I know Rocky, Eagle, Centennial, and Lake City have run them. Anyone else? Anyone know results form those?

I have to wonder how accurate the info from an intrasquad time trial actually is. My son said that on his teams years ago most of the top runners wouldn’t really race it. They’d run hard enough to make sure the coaches rated them as varsity, but they didn’t want to empty the tank more than that given how long the season was and how many races they had coming up. The all time leaderboards as a result don’t accurately reflect how good past stars actually were at that point.

I would assume the top kids don't really run it super hard and you can't put much stock in it, but for a lot of teams, the 2-10 runners are probably trying to prove fitness a little bit.

How did centennials time trial go?

As per the rocky coaches Strava, the rocky TT was 1.5 miles✅

strava.com

Jeff Howard | Strava Runner Profile

Jeff Howard is a runner from Boise, Idaho. Join Strava to track your activities, analyze your performance, and follow friends. Strava members can plan routes, participate in motivating challenges, and join clubs. Get started...

Link:www.strava.com/athletes/71661363

If that 5:05 miler could improve that much in 3 months, it seems like Rocky’s crazy growth from last year could tentatively be sustainable

I wouldn’t say they had crazy growth last year, just consistent steady progress for most of their kids. Just like tons of programs around the country with coaches that care about their kids.

For curiosity's sake, I took a look at the top 10 athletes from Rocky who competed at the Bugtown invite during both the 2021 season, and the 2022 season. I choose this race because the course is quite fast and flat as well as not a super huge field, so there are very few reasons why an athlete wouldn't preform well there.

The average amount of improvement was 56 seconds.

That’s cool that he went out and ran the course again after reading message boards.

Heard he was stunned by the results and had to fact check map my run….

My math says 52, but the last 4 guys improved 73, 80, 82, and 77 seconds. That’s 60% of the improvement that you’re talking about across the top 10.

Plus, Bugtown 2021 ran one race for the guys. There were 150 guys in that race. 2022 had top 10 for each team in the varsity race. That’s a pretty different scenario than what you just explained.

I'm not saying that Jeff Howard is a liar, but unless you've got a wheel on it, it's hard to say that it's an accurate course, especially when your GPS data is throwing out a map like what he has on there.

The times could be off by a bunch simply by Jeff measuring the course by running down the center and the runners running the very inside of every corner. The big rounded turn at the west end of the park could cut 10 meters off on it's own.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Jeff measured the course one way, the runners ran it the way that they logically would, and it is in fact short a little bit because of that and the fact that measuring distance by GPS alone isn't best practice. Jeff is also a good coach, gets his kids to run, but boys having improvements like that is not unheard of, especially if you can get them to run 40+ miles a week over the summer.

Either way, we'll all see here shortly if Rocky is able to get the next group of guys to make the jump or not.

Has CDA had their time trial yet?

Bob firman is looking very competitive this year. 2 of the top 5 california teams are showing up Dana Hills and Trabuco Hills. It is possible one of these teams can become an auto qualifer in the California region so we would need to beat them to increase our chances of northwest getting a at-large bid.

athletic.net

Track & Field, Cross Country Results, Statistics

Meet results and team scores.

Link:www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/221...

In addition, California's Evan Noonan 8:49 as a sophmore in the 3200 is coming. Think Heemeyer can beat him?

Probably. Last year during Firman Heemeyer beat the following athletes:

8th at NXN/8:48/4:09/1:51

3rd at Champs/8:48/4:15

24th at Champs/8:57/4:13

25th at NXN/8:50/4:10

14th at NXR NW/9:12/4:05

34th at Champs/9:10/4:17/1:55

16th at NXR NW/9:17/4:21

24th at NXR SW/9:19/4:28

Long story short, if Heemeyer is in similar fitness to last year, he can probably beat Noonan, and if he's in better fitness, than it might not even be very close.

One of those guys raced him twice after that defeat at Firman and neither one was close. Nathan Neil was on his third high school cross country race ever at Firman. The race at NON was clear as to the fact that Neil is on another level than Heemeyer.

You have it the wrong way around Heemeyer (despite how good he is) is the underdog here. People on the Cali threads are saying Noonan will most likely be the top guy in Cali.

If he were to beat Noonan he is a lot better this year than last year and would most likely need to rebreak the course record 14:50 at eagle park

All that stuff about lighthouses and the Rocky runners can’t figure out how to treat their competitors with respect. That is, the top end JV guy that’s a senior that acts like he’s earned something.

I’m sure that Landon doesn’t treat people like this, but his teammates sure do. Imagine saying that a race between Landon and a guy that’s 10 seconds faster over 3200 won’t be even very close.