Official Idaho HS XC 2023 Thread

Who do you see as the district 3 qualifiers? Who does Mountain View return?

7 teams will qualify.

On the boys side, Rocky, Boise, Centennial are virtual locks.

The pool of potential qualifiers for the last 4 spots are Timberline, Mountain View, Eagle, Capital, Owyhee, and Meridian.

There appears to be another tier of teams that should qualify. They are (with their best marks in track):

Timberline: 4:29/9:37, 2:03/4:36, 2:04/4:37, 4:43/10:08, 4:41/10:33, 2:02/4:50 (ran the 1600 sparingly, has a 16:35 PR), 2:03/4:47

Mountain View: 4:24/9:54, 4:34/10:08, 4:46/10:15, 4:42/10:23, 2:05/4:42/10:37, 2:11/4:43, 4:50

Eagle: 4:18/9:13, 1:57/4:32/10:21 (ran this once), 4:50/9:59, 4:57/10:18, 2:05/4:56/10:37, 5:02/11:02, 5:10/11:18

Timberline and Mountain View are a lot deeper than Eagle, but Eagle has a low stick where the other two don't. Eagle is also better at 2 and 3 than both, but is worse at 4 and 5, just not as bad as I had actually assumed. They are actually super comparable to Mountain View at 4 and 5. Timberline is hard to gauge because a lot of their guys just never ran 3200.

Owyhee, Meridian, and Capital have the same deal. One really good runner and then a pretty big gap.

On the girls side, Boise, Rocky, Mountain View, and Timberline are locks.

Owyhee returns 5:23/11:19, 5:31/12:01, 2:17/5:41, 2:32/5:59, 5:56/12:15, and 5:56. They should be considered a lock as well.

Eagle returns 5:23, 5:45/12:19, 5:47/12:37, 5:48/13:13, 6:01.

I wish I was kidding, but after that, there's a huge gap. Of course, a team gets a couple of good girls from middle school and they can suddenly be competitive, but with actual returners, these are the top 6 teams.

Which of the guys with great 800 times is most likely to also have the range to go sub 15:30 at Eagle Island and challenge for top 10 at NXR? While solid in XC, their 800 success makes me wonder which could also have the endurance to be just as good at a 5k this year. Some 800 stars can do it, others can’t.

kemper 1:53

Stadtlander 1:53

Helder 1:53

Blaser 1:54

Kemper was 4th in the 3200 at state.
Helder was 5th at state cross and has run 9:34.
Blaser was 6th.

Realistically, those 3 absolutely could.

Athay has no strava posts since Jul 25, 2022

If it isn’t on Strava, it didn’t happen.

I don’t think it’s likely that anyone aside from Heemeyer and potentially Maximus Cervi Skinner, gets top 10 at NXR. Last year, Gorze and those who tried it with him strung the race out fairly well, and so the times it took to get top 10 (15:28) wasn’t as indicative as the amount of effort that it took, because honestly, most everyone in the top 25 could’ve gone sub 15:30 on the right day.

Carr (rising freshman at CDA) - 4:37 in the mile at Brooks PR

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I certainly think Ringert, Kemper, and Lucas have shown the track chops to be able to. It was established in another thread that Ringert had issues during last cross season and got those figured out. He beat Cervi-Skinner head to head by quite a bit. Kemper beat Cervi-Skinner head to head while not really focusing on the 3200m and also beat Lucas. Lucas has basically the same PR as Ringert and Cervi-Skinner.

Also, North Idaho Distance project covers most of District I and II, but is coached by the CDA coach. They just had three more 8th graders run pretty well- 4:54, 4:56, and 5:02 for the full mile. If those kids end up at CDA, CDA looks like they will be really, really good for a few years, especially with Carr having just run as fast as he did.

Also, Luke Bruce (younger brother of Allie Bruce) just ran 4:47.07 for the full mile as an 8th grader. He'll probably help with Boise's depth as well.

Wow… what a last couple days for Idaho boys.

Landon Heemeyer runs 9:01 for the full 2 mile (8:58 or so 3200)

Andrew Ringert runs 9:12 (9:08 ish)

Noe Kemper runs 1:52. Also runs 6:01 in the steeple to win the championship out of the slow heat.

Nate Stadtlander runs 1:52.

Kaden Helder runs 9:32 full 2 mile.

5A boys with sub 9:30 or equivalent times returning are: Heemeyer, Ringert, Lucas, Cervi-Skinner, Kemper, Helder. I think we could see 3-4 sub 9 guys, 4-5 sub 4:10 guys and 3 1:50 or faster guys in 5A next year. Insane.

I took a look at the tentative schedules and a few meets jumped out at me as interesting or important for Idaho this year. I was looking for where we will get signs about how the teams are shaking out and whether Idaho might get an at large bid this year.

Sep. 2 - Cardinal Classic in Soda Springs. Every city should be so lucky as to have a great XC skiing course to use for XC racing. Boise and Mountain View head out and sometimes there is a strong Wyoming runner or team to add to the competition.

Sep. 8 - Tiger Grizz gives a good early chance to see how SE Idaho and a handful of traveling Boise teams like Rocky fare on a tough XC course.

Sep. 23 - Bob Firman - Almost all the contenders except CDA will be there. Boise v. Rocky v. Utah schools should be very telling whether either could contend for NXN this year. Will any other Boise school threaten them? How will they match up with the WA and OR teams like Seattle Prep that are coming out? This looks like Rocky's best chance to make a national statement.

Sep. 30 - Nike Portland - A few Idaho teams are headed out. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but strong showings by Idaho teams at big OR and WA meets could help any Idaho team, not just them, merit an at large Idaho bid.

Sep. 30 - Twilight meet at Cedarcrest in WA - Boise's chance to make an out of state impression.

Oct 5 Bob Conley - Rocky and IF square off on the state course and give us a chance to see how their current teams compare to their recent fast teams on the state course.

Oct 7 - Nike Hole in the Wall in WA - CDA's best chance to make its case for an at large bid, if needed. Timberline also head out.

What did I miss?

Question for everyone…..

Will Ruby Ihmels (Timberline 9th Grader and daughter of Corey Ihmels the Boise State Head Coach) win the State Title this upcoming fall? If so, does she help lead Timberline to an upset over Boise?

Unfortunately, with how good The Southwest Region is and the obvious California bias from Richy Gonzalez and company, the NW will have a very hard time getting 3 teams through. Rocky Mountain was ranked around 10th-12th nationally and didn’t receive a bid. The NW will need 3 teams ranked higher than that and all have great days on one Saturday in November.

That doesn’t mean that no Idaho boys team has a chance to qualify for NXN though.
Crater and CDA will likely make it.
So this will likely be the first year an Idaho boys team makes it

I wouldn’t say likely. Both Crater and CDA will have to earn it, losing Gorze is a huge hit and they aren’t super deep. CDA wasn’t stellar this spring, they’ll be good, but saying they are a likely NXN team is a big improvement from last year and the spring they had. The NW still has deep programs like Jesuit and Rocky in the mix, along with a handful of others that will make NXR NW super interesting. I bet it’ll be 6-8 teams deep with Top 30 caliber teams.

Jesuit had a somewhat large 4-5 gap last year and they lose all of their top 3.
So they will have a lot of ground to make up.
But they do have great coaching and a ton of depth to pull from, and lots of incoming sophomores and juniors that stepped up during track.
Also they have a Schumacher on the team who didn’t race last fall but had a solid track season.