MN Cross Country Predictions 2022

The crazy thing about Wayzata is…out of the 4 guys that broke 16:01…3 of them are coming back next year! In fact, everyone is, except their #1.
We can expect 2 more guys to close the gap on them next year or even this year.
With teams like Newbury Park losing almost their whole varsity, Wayzata could possibly be one of those teams challenging for a national title next year if they keep it up and keep improving. Something they were oh-so-close to achieving in 2014.

Nechanicky would have been one of the varsity alternates on the Wayzata boys team, and would have scored for Eden Prairie (the team that will make state out of a tough section this year). Craziness. Pure craziness.

Also better than all of the senior boys on the team except Hamza

I did some research: Weimer's speed rating for that 17:43 was a 141. Abbey Nechanicky held the previous course record for this venue, from a Lake Conference meet held in late Sept. 2020: she ran a 17:25.7 then for a speed rating of 146. (Then of course she didn't run this course at all in 2021, due to her injury.) So she just broke her own previous course record here by over 38 seconds, and finished ahead of second place (Norah Hushagen, a fine runner btw) by around 78 seconds. I can't wait to see the speed rating for this.....I'm guessing it will be above 155.

How the top 5 teams could win state:

Wayzata: Get a 5th guy to run faster, possibly lower stick? Pretty good as is.

Lakeville North: 3-5 need to beat Wayzatas 5, and #1 must beat Wayzata #1. 6-5 must close.
Rosemount: #1 needs to be much faster, gap is very tight, so all of their 5 must be ahead of Lakeville’s 5.
Minnetonka: Gilles needs to return to his 2021 XC/2022 track form. #2 will need to beat Lakeville’s #2, even better if they beat Wayzata’s #1. 6-5-4 gap must close.
Moundsview: McArthur must show his 14:56 speed from garmin and have a breakthrough. 2-5 must close gap on 1, they are too slow.

Hot Take: The Edina boys will pull off an upset over Washburn and Jefferson at Gale Woods. We haven’t seen them at full strength at all this season. If Defor and Haerter run, they could do some special things…

I was gonna say add Minneapolis Minneapolis Washburn to the list but they need to close the 2-5 gap (yes I know they need to even find a 5 first to even secure their state berth)
Wayzata had McMillan missing. Probably would have been up there with their 4th. Their 5th guy from this race ran a sub-16 last year at RunningLane and scored for them. So he could close the 4-5 gap too. RunningLane is a fast course but still, it’s been long since then and he has been progressing.
I’m surprised about how underwhelming mounds view is this year. Maybe they haven’t been racing much? At their next meet we’ll see how they progressed. They are still missing a senior who scored for them last year. But their back end of their varsity is deeper than ever it looks like. They only graduated skelly.

You sound like a hornet

The real question is if Edina is gonna make state this year with both Defor/Harter healthy.

Minnetonka is obviously in the league of their own in that section.

Pretty surprising to see Derouin from EP go from a 16:33 at Bauman Rovn to a minute slower in the rest of his races. Wonder what happened to him.

EP does have 5 guys that have run under 16:34 so they can put 5 guys in front of Edina’s 3 with Derouin healthy (or 6 if Doolittle gets back to where he was last year when he made state without a team but only with 2 of his teammates who are both back).
Or maybe actually 7. Another senior who wasn’t on varsity last year. He broke 17 his first time.

So even if their 6/7 don’t score, first, EP would take it in a tiebreaker, and second, they would displace Edina’s 3-5 guys which would add more points to Edina’s scoring.
Conference will give us a better idea of this.
EP also seems to have found a front runner (he made state last year), and ran 9 seconds faster than his teammates.

Speed rating is out for Nechanicky at the STMA Invite: 155 (155.20 to be exact). Slightly higher than Grace Schager's prior 155 on the national list.

Wayzata had 4 guys in the 170+ speed rating. And 3 are back next year.

For Rosemount to win state it will be a very long stretch. They have a solid pack of 5 but not only don’t they have a 6th or a low stick, but their #1 was behind North’s number 4 guy at Griak. This is too much to catch up on.
North’s 5th was close to Rosemount’s 5th.
But Rosemount always seems to find their identity at Ev Berg.
Will be an interesting match up there between these 2 teams. And the course isn’t as hard as Griak.
They are also in the same conference.

Looks like Edina is not running their varsity guys except defor at Victoria lions

results.wayzatatiming.com

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Link:results.wayzatatiming.com/meets/18467/...

Victoria lions invite:

Caleb Dickel- sophomore that finished 3rd beat Sutter, Sanvik and Hage. He has the same last name as Grace Dickel (2019 Washburn alum).
Dominic Haugland is probably Caleb’s brother.
William Just from Washburn was in 8th and usually runs with Dickel/Haugland but he finished in 20:38. This is what costed them the win.
Stillwater’s top 5 guys finished 8th through 12th and won as a team.
Nick Scheller (2020) alum has a brother leading the Chanhassen team.
Prior Lake girls team crushed it.

Abbey Nechanicky has at least four more races lined up this season: Conference and Section meets at the Gale Woods course (course record = 16:56), the State meet at St. Olaf (cr = 17:03), and Nike Heartland at Yankton Trails (cr = 16:48). What are the chances she can break some more course records?

Big lake wins by a lot. Rock ridge missing Stocke and a Kendall brother but BL still would have won if they both raced. They won state last year and they only got rid of one person so I don’t see why they wouldn’t win state again.