MN Cross Country Predictions 2022

interesting results from rocori, especially on big lakes side.

Boys aaa rankings-

biggest jump since preseason rankings:

MPLS Washburn

biggest drop since preseason rankings:

hopkins

Wow, big lake had 2 guys under 16, and one close to breaking it. Their 4/5 weren’t too bad either. For an AA team to beat them, at the very minimum, they will need to get 5 guys ahead of big lake’s 4th

I'm not sure how Big Lake's 1 and 2 aren't ranked they have beaten guys that are ranked. If you don't have time to sift through results don't rank people.

Hopkins also has another 8th grader who won the junior high race in the Bauman Rovn invite. He ran a 5K once with not a varsity level time, but he and Drevlow could carry the team to big things in the future (when they are juniors and seniors) especially with seeing how much talent Hopkins always gets in their scoring 5.

on the boys side, Edina, Wayzata, Lakeville South, and Minneapolis Southwest, Hopkins, breck, and Marshall, perham and Jefferson only have 2 seniors at the most entered.
All of them do have 2 seniors at the most on varsity except Edina (missing Defor and Petrella).
Marshall actually only has 1 senior and 2 juniors
Hopkins has a lot of young talent that could maybe get them to state in 2 years. Yes they do have 3 very good class of 2024 guys but Southwest, Washburn and Wayzata all have some solid c/o 2024 guys as well.

LN and Dowling both had their 5th men well behind their 4th.
Minnetonka was missing 2 of their scorers

So at this point it should not be that hard to do the AAA rankings. the only challenge will be where to put EP and Stillwater in the rankings

White Bear is a 5th man away from beating Woodbury (this team has a 15 second spread).
I don’t think there’s much time for WBL’s 5th to catch up to their 4th.
looks like Woodbury will likely be going to state for the first time in a long time. Woodbury is also missing a freshman Colton Christenson

Boys AAA rankings - teams

1. Lakeville North. Finished as the #1 MN team at Griak.
2. Wayzata. Finished as the #2 MN team at Griak. They only lose 1 person so next year they look really good.
3. Rosemount. Finished as the #3 MN team at Griak. No low stick but they got a nice 1-5. Their 6/7 are far behind so their top 5 better be on when it matters.
4. Minnetonka. Finished as the #4 MN team at Griak. 2 of their scorers didn’t race, but I don’t think they would have beaten Rosemount if they did race. Gilles had an off day but he raced.
5. Mounds View. Finished as the #5 MN team at Griak.
6. Minneapolis Washburn. Finished as the #6 MN team at Griak. Needs a 5th man for this team to move up in the rankings and secure their spot at the state meet.
7. Minneapolis Southwest. Finished as the #7 MN team at Griak. They have a solid 1-6. One of their 4-6 guys had an off day but because they had 6 studs, this didn’t hurt them much. After this season, they should start finding a 5th man for next year. Maybe finding a solid 7th man could help them for this year even more, and next year they would have a fifth man ready to go.
8. Eden Prairie. Did not race at Griak, but they got beat by Southwest the last time they raced. They have a good pack but lack a low stick.
9. Stillwater. Did not race at Griak but they have a very good group of 5 studs.
10. Bloomington Jefferson. Finished as the 8th MN AAA team at Griak. They returned a good core group of guys from last year’s state qualifying team, got a solid low stick, and the younger kids are starting to step up.

AAA Boys top 2 teams in each section:
1- Lakeville north and Lakeville south
2- Minnetonka and Eden Prairie
3- Rosemount and Bloomington Jefferson
4- Stillwater and Woodbury
5- Mounds View and Roseville
6- Wayzata and Minneapolis Washburn
7- Blaine and Duluth East
8- Buffalo and Bemidji

Boys AAA individuals
1. Noah Breker. Won Griak
2. Sam Scott. Second MN AAA guy at Griak
3. Andrew Casey. 3rd MN AAA guy at Griak.
4. Aidan Jones. 4th MN AAA guy at Griak
5. Hamza Mohamed. 5th MN AAA guy at Griak.
6. Nolan Sutter. Won the Maroon race at Griak. 6th fastest time by an MN AAA person.
7. Bryce Stachewicz. 7th fastest time by an MN AAA person.
8. Adam Lueth. 8th fastest time by an MN AAA person.
9. Hootie Hage. Did not run Griak but got beat by Lueth the last time they raced.
10. Max Westerlund. 9th fastest time by an MN AAA person.

Gilles had an off race and didn’t even beat his teammate. Hopefully he is ready to go when state and NXR comes.

I got word that Gilles and Minnetonka’s normal #6 (Downin) was sick but raced anyway. While Tonkas normal 5(Thomas) was also sick. So they could be much better at full strength. Although Lakeville and Dowling ran very strong…

A couple issues with this. 1) Even though Gilles had an off race leaving him out of top 10 seems like an overreaction. Who knows what happened - is he sick, did he get spiked, maybe just a bad day - regardless 99/100 asked would say he’s top 10 in the state. 2) Lueth beat Sutter by 18s last week and they didn’t race H2H today, even though Sutter’s time was slightly faster I’d say Lueth’s big H2H big would be prioritized over comparing times from different races (albeit on the same course)

Big wow day from Bloomington Jefferson freshman. On a course that’s officially 105m long and probably longer:

17:29, 17:54, 18:25

Also their sophomores ran well:

17:30 18:10 18:16

Given that Rosemount loses 4 of top 5 and 6 of top 10, this is a team that could take over 3AAA and put themselves in the statewide conversation in as soon as 2 years.

Yeah I think Gilles should probably be top 5 even though he had an off day.
I thought McArthur was gonna finish higher than he did. He was with the leaders in the first mile though.

I think the better rankings would look like this:
1. Noah Breker
2. Sam Scott
3. Andrew Casey
4. Aidan Jones
5. Nick Gilles
6. Elliott McArthur (he finished in front of Charlie Power Thiesen in the first race. Not sure what happened to him here). He was up there in the first mile though.
7. Hamza Mohamed
8. Bryce Stachewicz
9. Adam Lueth
10. Nolan Sutter
11. Hootie Hage (did not race at Griak so it’s kind of hard to decide where to put him. But we can’t move him down much for not racing at Griak)
12. Max Westerlund
13. Cade Sanvik
14. Will Weber
15. Ethan Starfield

I decided to do a top 15 here, otherwise I would have had to leave some key guys left out.

Speaking of freshman / sophomore classes:
Minnetonka, Edina, Eden Prairie, and Perham also have solid freshman / sophomore classes.
It is also worth noting that 3 of these teams are in the same section, so 1 of them won’t get to race at state in 2 years.

Yes. Rosemount might struggle to even make state next year. East Ridge has a solid team this year and has everyone back next year too.
After this year, Jefferson could win the section 3aaa race two, or maybe even three years in a row.

Stillwater puts 5 under 17. So I’m keeping them at 9th in the rankings.
Nice reloading after losing 5 varsity seniors from last year’s state meet.
http://www.accuracetiming.com/results/2022/laxcc_22b.pdf
8th grader won the girls race
http://www.accuracetiming.com/results/2022/laxcc_22g.pdf