Best All-Time HS All-Star XC Team by State

Some right, some wrong, no, mostly wrong:

MN.... Not in order:

Garry Bjorklund

Garrett Heath

Mark Nenow

Bob Kempainen

Hasan Mead

Steve Holman

Pick your 7th: Dick Beardsley, Elliot Heath, Mike Slack, Donavon Bergstrom, Doug Hanson, Ben Blankenship, Luke Watson.....too many #7s to mention.

Goucher Needles wrote:

Some right, some wrong, no, mostly wrong:

MN.... Not in order:

Garry Bjorklund

Garrett Heath

Mark Nenow

Bob Kempainen

Hasan Mead

Steve Holman

Pick your 7th: Dick Beardsley, Elliot Heath, Mike Slack, Donavon Bergstrom, Doug Hanson, Ben Blankenship, Luke Watson.....too many #7s to mention.

This thread is getting further and further away from the original title:

"Best All-time HS All-Star XC Team by State"

1) what they did in CROSS COUNTY while in HIGH SCHOOL.

Nenow, Kempainen, Holman, Slack and Beardsley did nothing in high school cross country

Kalaby wrote:

For me, Trautmann and Gregorek are #1 and #2...beyond that, I think you could probably make a case for about 20 or so guys for those remaining 5 spots, including other guys not mentioned yet, like 1960s greats Pete Randall, Dave Pottetti and Gary Connor.

Actually Pottetti should be an automatic on the New York list. He set the standard to which everyone else had to follow.

I'm throwing a couple more names in the mix for the Virginia team since this a XC list and it's very biased towards the super fast track guys from the last 15 years. The last 20 years the runners have run on flat super fast courses which catered to the track guys. I ran in the 80's on the very tough Piedmont Course at UVA. Jeff Slater of Monacan won in back to back years (Jim Hill only won one state title XC title even though he had much success on the track in college). Andre Williams (13:30/28:30 post collegiate) destroyed the state meet record by 20 seconds at Piedmont and followed it up 2 weeks later by winning the Foot Locker South race. Alex Tatu won in back to back years after Alan Webb who should be in the #1 slot since he won the race 3 times.

Goucher Needles wrote:

Some right, some wrong, no, mostly wrong:

MN.... Not in order:

Garry Bjorklund

Garrett Heath

Mark Nenow

Bob Kempainen

Hasan Mead

Steve Holman

Pick your 7th: Dick Beardsley, Elliot Heath, Mike Slack, Donavon Bergstrom, Doug Hanson, Ben Blankenship, Luke Watson.....too many #7s to mention.

I am not a MN expert, but Nenow started running the September of his senior year and ran 4:18y/9:17y. He ran before the Kinney Championships were held so we can't hold that against him, but did he really impress that much in the first 8 weeks of his running career to be an all-time great?

Mead was undefeated as a senior and 4th in FL, but otherwise undistinguished on the grass or the track. Plus, there is no way to know how old he was when he came here.

Dick Beardsley was a nowhere man in HS.

WiscoBesto wrote:

Wisconsin

Chris Solinsky

Chris Rombough

Olin Hacker

Tim Hacker

Gabe Jennings

I disagree with Rombough and Jennings

Chris Solinsky

Tim Hacker

Olin Hacker

Keith Hanson

Glenn Herold

Can’t believe this thread is on its seventh page and I don’t believe the second most populous state has been mentioned. I’m not originally from TX so just throwing out a few well-known names to get the discussion started. Someone help me out.

Reina

Lutz

Hauser(s)

Magness

Georgia guys

1. Ben Hubers

2. Kirubel Erassa

3. Girma Mecheso

4. Josh Brickell

5. Ralph King

6. Travis Grindstaff

7. Willie Nelson?

Girls (not sure about this one)

1. Amanda Winslow

2. Emily Reese

3. Emily Borsare

4. Nicky Akande

5. Grace Tinkey

Not sure after that. I think there have been a couple of recent studs but I haven't been keeping up.

malmo wrote:

Kalaby wrote:

For me, Trautmann and Gregorek are #1 and #2...beyond that, I think you could probably make a case for about 20 or so guys for those remaining 5 spots, including other guys not mentioned yet, like 1960s greats Pete Randall, Dave Pottetti and Gary Connor.

Actually Pottetti should be an automatic on the New York list. He set the standard to which everyone else had to follow.

With respect to the NY scene, Pottetti is criminally overlooked whenever these types of discussions take place. If I recall correctly, Pottetti and Liquori went 1-2 at the '65 Easterns race and then had that result reversed in the following year's race. I think that was Dave's only XC defeat over his final two years in high school competition.

Randall was a couple of years before those guys and he took the VCP record from just below 13:00 all the way down to 12:36.5. That was the VCP CR until the aforementioned '66 Easterns race where Liquori took it down to 12:23.2.

TOPIC: best high school cross country runners!

NOT: Best high school track runners

NOT: Best runners in college

NOT: Best runners after college.

Carry on.

Lone Star wrote:

Can’t believe this thread is on its seventh page and I don’t believe the second most populous state has been mentioned. I’m not originally from TX so just throwing out a few well-known names to get the discussion started. Someone help me out.

Reina

Lutz

Hauser(s)

Magness

For TX

From a 4 year career in the big school classes hard to beat Bobby Aguirre in TX for overall career. (4,1,2,1 at the State Meet)

Can't ignore Alan Culpeppers multi state titles as well.

Colby Lowe

Cali:

Ryan Hall

German Fernandez

Meb

Rocha

Ammar Moussa

Elias Gedyon

Mercado twins

that's the second time I've seen the Mercado's mentioned. That's gotta be a joke. But at the same time, I'm also seeing a lot of bias towards the "legends" of the 70's or 80's.

Ponderosa Pines wrote:

[quote]fdasfadf wrote:

Iowa

Phil Coppess (2:10 marathoner, Chicago Marathon winner)

Mark Johnson (former U of Wisconsin 10k record holder, 4 time state champion in cross country)

Matt Gabrielson (13:30 5k, 2:13 marathon)

Josh Moen (13:35 5k, 1:02 half marathon)

Kiel Uhl (10,000 meter All-American at Iowa State)

Thomas Pollard (In high school, 8:50 3200, 4:06 1600, two time Footlocker finalist)

Kevin Lewis (13:43 5k while at U of Iowa)[/

The OP stated high school creds, all but Pollard are listed as college/pro. Coppess was like a 4:21 miler in high school.

From the mid-70s

Randy Jackson - 3rd behind Salazar and Froelick at AAU XC, or whatever it was. 9:00 2 mile (8:56-57 3200)

Ed Delashmutt - triple crown mile champ (IPI, Golden West, and another on the east coast); effectively national track champ. ca. 4:05.

Jon Mathiason - 9:02 2 mile (8:58-59 3200)

David Korir - 1:49 or 1:50 in high school and went onto mid-d stardom at ISU

Add Jim Eicken 8:55 2 mile (8:52 3200 m) 1975

localboy wrote:

that's the second time I've seen the Mercado's mentioned. That's gotta be a joke. But at the same time, I'm also seeing a lot of bias towards the "legends" of the 70's or 80's.

Don't know what you mean by "bias" since the runners today still aren't running many times those guys did 30 and 40 years ago. While Xc courses are a little more difficult to compare, those legends put up track times that are rarely approached today. The reason was that you had some kids doing stuff that is still considered crazy. One kid ran 200 mile weeks. Another kid would do 60 440s. Many others were routinely pounding out 100+ mile weeks. If you have bunches of kids doing that, a handful will be able to handle the work and run amazing times.

One point of note I have seen happen for both men and women over the years is that some of the best young runners have an older sibling that was already running in college. Back in the day without as much training info, these younger runners were probably just following the training the college teams were doing which is a lot more than most high school kids would be doing. Nobody told them they shouldn't be doing that.

I am really enjoying seeing the interest in XC. I am doing my best to update rosters and will ask for help to list HS times when we get to that point. There is a passion that permeates each persons' choices. I grew up running (70s) in California and now coach in Oregon, so my knowledge is limited of other states prep harriers. In my day we had the Runners World booklet of the month "How They Train" and eventually Harrier Magazine. Otherwise our knowledge was based on who we ran against in our league, division, and state. Now we have Dye Stat and LetsRun to give us a much broader picture of high school runners across the nation.

I am doing my best to update rosters and will ask for help to list HS times when we get to that point. I still need rosters from these last 20 states: Alabama

Arizona

Delaware

Florida

Hawaii

Idaho

Louisiana

Maryland

Missouri

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Mexico

North Dakota

Oklahoma

Rhode Island

South Carolina

Tennessee

Vermont

West Virginia

Kathy Mills from FM should be on the list.

Jayhawk wrote:

Kansas

Boys

1. Jim Ryun

2. Brent Steiner

3. Steve Fein

4. Billy Mills

5. Lane Boyer

6. Kevin Newkirk

7. Chris Williams

Girls

1. Amy Mortimer

2. Amanda Pape

3. Trisha Nicoley

4. Alyson Deckert

5. Jill Woods

6. Amy Hastings

7. Laura Roxberg

What did Billy Mills do of note in high school?

Billy Mills was a state champion while he attended Haskell.

What are you talking about? There are more kids running faster nowadays than ever before. We're not in the early 2000's anymore. Sub 4 has happened 4 times in the past 6 years! Guys running in the mid 8:40's for 3,200m or 2 mi and stack up well now against the "legends", yet they still get the benefit of the doubt. Track times are empirical. XC times get a little more dicey even on direct course comparisons but even then guys nowadays are also blowing away course records.