wow look at the differences between Plainfield south’s 2018 and 2022 times. PS’s #1 wouldn’t have made varsity this year if he was still in the same shape. Can you imagine…
every single scoring position was faster by literally a minute
Anything changed there? Was it new coaching? New training? New philosophy? More XC interests?
There isn't a big enough sample size here to tell. If it's coaching or training we would need to see several years of consistent success for that to be considered. They got 7th last year, prior to that not even qualifying. I think they got a couple of classes that just had exceptional guys and it came together this year. It happens quite often where a school with no long term history of success just gets a good group for a couple of years, has success for 2 or 3 years then regresses back into the masses when they've all graduated. With what they have coming back I'd expect them to be a good team next year too, after that we'll see. Their F-S teams haven't been very impressive.
The Plainfield school that actually has a better chance of long term success would appear to be Plainfield North. They not only are having a good varsity squad they also have a very good underclass group.
Tatum David dominates. When she went to IMG Academy 2 years ago, that team was very good. IMG Academy has a strong 1/2 (or at least a strong 1) this year. If David, Siff-Scherr, Ward, and McNatt all still went there, they would have been really good. They also have a freshman (Buckingham) who ran a 5:14 1600 but mostly focuses on tennis. If they all did XC for IMG this year, this would have been a deadly top 7. 2 could be out and they would still have a solid top 5 2 years ago was when IMG academy had the best team they ever had, and it was mostly freshman/sophomore-built