The Minneapolis South boys won four straight state titles. Their total of 29 points from the 1991 state meet still stands as the lowest in Minnesota history.
In my era, Cretin-Durham Hall, Saint Paul, MN was a solid city XC. The male team went to state numerous times.
Cretin doesent have enough runners to assemble a seven man team nowadays
Bill Miles coached this program to a state championship. Then he did the same at Wayzata - many state championships and NXN berths (including a second place finish in 2014). Legendary coach
From 1988-1991 Minneapolis South won four straight large school state championships in Minnesota. In the last of those (despite their top returning runner not scoring due to injury) they scored 29 points, which is still the state meet record 34 years later.
State College is NOT an inner-city school. Allderdice out of Pittsburgh is an inner-city school, so are Masterman and Central out of Philadelphia. I won't go into the prep schools that are in Philly and Pittsburgh (Central Catholic, St. Joe's Prep).
Maybe not exactly the best but Franklin HS in Portland has had some strong years. Lincoln is located closest to city center but tends to be known as a rich kid school. They also remain strong
A private school, walled off inside a city, is not inner city and shouldn't be considered. Also, a "city" could be actually a smaller town. Our school (McMinn County) in Tennessee met every single criteria to qualify as an inner city school but was in a county of 30,000, desperately poor, drug addled, despondently disillusioned, and diverse, yet won the boys state championship for the large public schools in 2002. They may not have been the best of all time, but they were really, really good.
Is Mohammed Bati eligible for Highland Park? They had a good returning team without him, but with him they should be the favorite. He destroyed all the HS competition at the Torchlight 5k road race and will finish top-3 at state. Along with Paleen, they will have two guys in the top-10 now. Rumors are that he is considerably older than the 19 years old that he is listed at (or the freshman status he was listed at for track). It's a tricky scenario since I've heard he doesn't have a birth certificate: does he have to prove his eligibility or does it have to be disproven?