Washington State HS XC 2025 Season

Enough said. If you can get 60 guys to run 50-60 mile weeks most of the year you will always have a good team.

Hard to give a definitive answer right now since Cohen Butler and Isaac Benjamin haven't really began racing. They'll be in the mix at the end of the season so this will be my gut based off of results we have seen so far

Boys -

1. Mana Voss (3a, Central Kitsap) - incredible kick at the end of Steilacoom after falling off 10-15meters with a half mile to go

2. Miro Parr-Coffin (4a, Gonzaga Prep) - beat one of my early favorites, Bodie Thomas at The Mook.

3. Henry Herb (3a, Seattle Prep) - Did a lot of the work at Steilacoom, barely lost in a kick

4. Bodie Thomas (3a, Mercer Island) - may be coming back from an injury(?) so could move up quickly as the season progresses

5. Leroy Lozano Mejia (3a, Hermiston) - So much young talent this year, had a great battle with one of Idaho's top runners in his first race of the season

on the bubble (don't count them out, no particular order) -Quenton Lanese, Matthew Lawrence, Zach Frazier, Cohen Butler, Isaac Benjamin

Girls -

(I wish I were as knowledgeable on the girls, something I am working on)

1. Sophia Rodriguez (3a, Mercer Island) - This is the obvious pick for #1, do I need to say more?

2. Sloane Clines (2a, Sehome) - Hard not to pick someone after a phenomenal team performance at The Mook

3. Latham West - (4a, Bonney Lake) - Dominant win at Steilacoom, was in full control

4. Lejla Carlsson - (3a, Gig Harbor) - 2nd returner in 3a, ran well at Steilacoom

5. Kjirsten Ludeman - (2a, Sehome) - not too far off her teammate, Clines. It's difficult not to put the whole Sehome line up on here

Bubble - Lil Desler, Jaycee Jenkins, Anna Hirsh, Kyla Roberts, Reed Atwood

Take it with a grain of salt. I've said this in a previous thread, I'd rather cast a wide net and add/remove contenders and pretenders as the season progresses. Still early in the season

Focusing on the guys, I largely agree. I think I’d go:

1) Parr-Coffin: seems to get better each race and nearly won The Mook

2) Voss: he had a strong kick at Steilacoom but he’s a mid-distance guy so that’s not surprising. He did not look as strong as I expected him to for the bulk of the race. Head to head, I think Pare-Coffin drops him and the kick is irrelevant

3/4: Herb & Thomas: Thomas has been very inconsistent at times so it’s hard to predict but I out these two as neck and neck

5) Lanese: Kid has talent and just competes. Also seems to get better each race and can probably hang on to nearly anyone he’ll face

???) Butler & Benjamin: In theory these two should be 1&2 in (in no particular order). I hear Butler injured himself lifting weights at the start of the season but he’s been training well according to Strava. Benjamin I have no clue about, as his Strava work seems strong, but I’m guessing the coach is anticipating an NXN run and wanted to protect against a too long season. Assuming they are healthy and true to form this season I expect them to be the top 2 in the state.

Apologies for the typos in the last post.

strava.app.link

Double T part one | Strava

4xmile at tempo with one min rest. 5:11 for all 4. Doing less cuz Portland is approaching | Strava

Link:strava.app.link/rYcYxuh0TWb

Also, per the above, looks like Benjamin really is fit and will be running Portland this week so we’ll have a better sense of where things stand. Camas will also be there so hopefully Butler will make his true debut as well. Should be a good race!

Double T at the HS level tells you all you need to know. Mark and avoid

4 Zach Frazier 12 Gonzaga Prep 14:32.2

5 Kingston Shillito 12 Franklin 14:32.8

6 Oliver Zimmerman 10 Cedar Park Christian (Bothell) 14:35.3

7 Nickolas Luce 12 Lynden Christian 14:41.8

Given those results, put Dylan Rowell on the list. He beat Luce by 13 seconds at Sehome’s 2-mile invite, setting the course record in the process.

I wouldn’t say “given those results” (we’ve beat The Mook to death), but your point is a good one. I’d somehow missed that result from Rowell—likely because of the class-based structure of the meet. With that result, and being the fastest returning xc 5k in the state, I’d put him at #2 and would bump everyone else down one. Will be exciting to see him at Portland Friday as well!

Yeah, I didn’t mean in terms of absolute time (like you said, the Mook…), more where the guys you listed were relative to the front and top-level comp, and how Rowell compared to Luce.

The fun part is that things aren’t static, they’ll evolve as the season progresses.

The crummy part is that the top guys don’t all actually get to toe the line at the same time at state…

I'd be great if GPrep could finally get a team together. There is really no excuse as they can draw from the talent pool far and wide in the PNW.

I’m surprised more private schools aren’t more dominate like Jesuit in Oregon.
maybe it’s not just the athletes on the roster

Gonzaga Prep has never been a running school unfortunately. They’ve been at the top of Football, Basketball, Volleyball etc. But it seems like it was hard to get a team to pull together to actually succeed in Cross Country. I’m excited to see where this group goes.

If you can build a football team and a basketball team in rift valley you can build a cross country team. Ferris did it, North Central did it, Mead did it, Lewis and Clark did it, Central Valley has done it.

Why pay to go run for a school when the public schools are just as good or better? I think Shadle Park, Rogers and Gonzaga Prep are the only schools in Spokane that have not gone on to NXN?

In the 3A/4A GSL the teams which haven’t gone are Gonzaga Prep, University, Shadle, Ridgeline, and Mt. Spokane.

Central Valley, Mead, North Central, Lewis and Clark, and Ferris have all made appearances on a number of occasions.

Prep was good in the mid/late 90s when I ran against them. But never able to put together sustained success and generally any success seemed to have been a product of a couple of runners at a time rather than an ongoing culture like at Mead, Ferris and NC. To do that you need a dynamic and charismatic coach and not sure Prep has had one necessarily, noting that there were sad circumstances that may have prevented this with Feryn.

Not sure the comparison to Jesuit is fair as I dont know how good the public schools in Portland are that Jesuit runners would otherwise attend. Prep - at least back then - wasnt an academic step-up from LC, for example.

That being said, the potential is obviously there since NC made its mark recruiting and recruiting is much easier at Prep, including by being able to draw kids from Idaho. Prep certainly recruited with football so no reason they couldnt with cross country, but (i) it would need to be a priority for the school and (ii) they would need to establish themself as a better alternative to other schools (which academically and athletically hasnt necessarily been the case, particularly after GSL/Spokane Schools permitted enrollment across school lines (that was then exploited by NC)).

People are still sore about North Central? One of the earlier discussions mentioned there were maybe only 1 or 2 scoring athletes in any one year of their "recruiting scandal"

And if you took those athletes out instead of winning state by 20-30 they win by 10-20

Oliver Reed I think was one of them from a decade+ ago. I could probably dig up the other examples from the old thread but no real point since it has already been hashed out.

The Kamiakin coach nominated Knight into the HOF so at least he is not bitter despite being runner-up to NC for about half of their 11-year streak.

Based off of demographics I just assume most kids in Spokane can't afford going to Prep. I dont think the inner city kids at NC could afford Prep.

They'd have to get kids from the valley to switch over.

Nearly all the action this weekend appears to be Friday at Portland XC. Entries are visible on the live results page at:

Loads of top Oregon talent, but the following Washington runners are entered:

Cohen Butler (Camas) and Isaac Benjamin (South Kitsap) are making their real 2025 XC debuts. Arguably the two best returning runners in the state. Will be interesting to see what shape they are in.

Dylan Rowell (Anacortes) has the fastest 2024 XC 5k time of all returning runners and will run his first 5k this fall. Seems to be in amazing shape based on shorter races.

Mana Voss (Central Kitsap) won Fort Steilacoom last week.

There's an argument to be had that these are the four best runners in WA, so it will be exciting to see how they do against some top-notch out-of-state competition. Anyone care to make any predictions?

Bellevue Invitational is Saturday. Entries are at:

athletic.net

Track & Field, Cross Country Results, Statistics

Meet results and team scores.

Link:www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/236...

Mercer Island, Seattle Prep, Gonzaga Prep, and Olympia (who all have runners who could also lay claim to being amongst the fastest in the state as well) all appear to have the weekend off, with Battle for the 509 and Payne/Curtis invites the following weekend.

NOTE: Although the time-comparison game is dangerous, people do it, so here's what I've found: Both Portland and Bellevue are flat and fast. Using the Steilacoom course as a baseline, in past years, runners who ran the Fort Steilacoom Invite and then either Portland or Bellevue the following weekend have typically run between 15 and 25 seconds at Portland/Bellevue (plenty of exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of the results I looked at fall within that range). This may not hold this year, however, as conditions and race dynamics trended a bit slow at Fort Steilacoom this year, whereas the weather and entries look top notch for Portland and Bellevue this weekend.