NXN 2024 - The Way Too Early Preview - BOYS

Not again😭

They should move Colorado to the Heartland region. They compete with that region for Footlocker qualifying, and it would even out the NXR regions.

Footlocker regions are much bigger though, because Midwest and Heartland is combined into one

Sure, my Herriman prediction was wrong but everything else was correct

I think Herriman and Niwot with be very close. It could be a toss up on who has the better day.

STOP...NXN WAS YESTERDAY.

HOW ABOUT A DAY OFF...

Plainfield South returns 2-3-5-6-7 (11-11-9-9-10) after finishing 1 point behind Plainfield North. As it seems frosh-soph make good growth development during this time they will be back.

They should realign the regions to be more accessible AND more competitive. It won't happen as long as Footlocker is around and competing for participants, though, but ideally...

7 regions sending 3 AQ teams + 4 At-Large = 25 teams; 35 Individuals (Top-5 from each region, NO AT-LARGE). That's 210 runners compared to the current field of 204, so not much different in terms of expenses or field congestion.

The Southwest and Midwest are often among the deepest regions, they can easily be split up and not create unreasonable travel hardships. And New York can easily be added to the Northeast to make it a far more competitive situation.

Southwest states: Colorado and New Mexico are sent to the South; Arizona and Nevada are sent to California (the new Southwest), and Utah is sent to the Northwest (region of doom).

Midwest states: Missouri, Illinois and Indiana are sent to the Heartland (the new Midwest) along with Wyoming from the Northwest (Wyoming's center of population is much closer to the Dakotas than to Idaho); Michigan and Ohio form the core of a new Mid-Atlantic region alongside New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and DC.

There would still be weak regions (e.g. Southeast) and deep regions (e.g. Northwest, Southwest and Midwest), but it would greatly strengthen most of the weakest regional fields (e.g. New York/Northeast, Heartland, South) and the meets would be closer to more people, allowing for more participation.

They return a couple pieces, but far less than the rest of the Midwest. They lack a solid 5-7

Not too shabby overall.

Some corrections:

Midwest:
Plainfield South will be top 3. They only lose 2 seniors and will be motivated to try to make NXN after missing it by 1 point. 3rd to 5th returners on the team are young and also new to high school XC, so with another year of experience they will help take this team to the next level.
Rock Bridge MO will be top 5 in the region. They are returning their 2-6 and finished in the top 5 this year.

Heartland:
Dowling Catholic IA will be top 5. They will challenge for an NXN spot after getting 3rd for the second year in a row and losing only 2 seniors.

Southeast:
Vestavia Hills AL will be top 5 and are will be motivated to challenge for an NXN spot after taking 3rd in the region and losing only 1 senior.

Southwest:
I think Mountain View UT can take 3rd or 4th. They made NXN last year and 3 of the guys who will be back next year raced at NXN last year. They took 10th at NXR and return everyone but their #5 & #6.
American Fork probably won’t be top 5 because they graduate 6 varsity guys.
Coronado is a team to watch but they took 19th at NXR. Doesn’t seem likely that they will take 3rd. I think they will take 5th.

California:
Jesuit CA should probably be included. They lose only 2 seniors. Problem is they are in Division 2 so they won’t be able to race Great Oak/Buchanan head-to-head.
Palisades Charter took 5th in the merge and only lose 2 seniors

New York:
No way Fairport will take second. They were ranked first preseason but they started to fade and took 6th at NXR. They are also graduating almost their entire varsity team.
Behind Monroe Woodbury, I think the second spot will go to either Saratoga (returns 3 scorers and some more solid underclassmen on JV) or Ithaca.

Speed ratings for returners at nationals:

Niwot:

Culpepper - 10 - 188

Sullivan - 9 - 188

Marshall - 10 - 180

Robbie - 10 - 175

Geldean - 11 - 173

Herriman:

Tang 1 - 11 - 189

Manwaring - 11 - 186 (at RunningLane)

Ogomo - 11 - 186

Tang 2 - 11 - 181

Runnells - 10 - 16:19 at NXR SW which would be a 163 there

So Herriman is looking to be better than Niwot at most of positions

Those 5-7 guys ran all season and South beat North how many times? Plus only a point behind at NXR. I don't understand what you're thinking is there.

Also keep in mind that near 0 kids go to FLR from Colorado almost everyone that goes has basically been gurunteed an FLN spot. NXR is hugely popular among everyone in colorado, and lots of teams with 0 shot at NXN, or even the championship heat at NXR go. Nike likely would be throwing away money if they moved colorado into heartland. RLN is already picking up alot of Colorado teams. If Nike sent Colorado to Sioux falls, alot of the teams would just go to RLN. Nike would lose 10's of thousands of dollars. However the top colorsdo teams would go to heartland and whoop some butt. The old heartland states are going to be really mad, especially on the girls side it's legitimate that colorado could go 1-4 and box out the old heartland teams from at large consideration.

Notes on the NW:

Jesuit returns a lot of solid guys, but they don't have anyone returning from the top 55 or better at NXR.

CDA won't have Jesuits depth, but they have a good pipeline of freshman (allegedly), and they return 3 guys from the top ~50 at NXR

Rocky Mountain has a ton of really good depth and they return a low stick with Cody Lucas who got 13th at NXR/20th at Runninglane. The rest of their guys are pretty far back but there's probably gonna be like 10 of them so who knows how good or not good they will be

Issaquah returns all but 1 of their guys, but none of them cracked the top 100 at NXR despite a solid state showing

Franklin returns 12th and 36th for the best 1-2 returning combo I could find, but they are going to have a serious depth problem.

Crater has the best individual returner at 4th, but they are going to be plagued by depth problems like most of these other teams.

Am I missing any other notable teams?

Well, for Niwot you only used speed ratings from NXN and then you used speed ratings from other races for Herriman. That isn’t a fair comparison. Mazurano (11) and Keeton (10) who were their 7th and 6th runners at NXN were their 2nd and 3rd runners at state where they ran a 180 and 176 speed ratings. Niwot also had another runner, Engtrakul (11) run 15:55 (170) at NXR SW in the open race. Kear (11) and Wood (11) ran 172 and 170 speed ratings at Desert Twilight with their 15:44 and 15:50 finishes.

To summarize Niwot returns:

188, 188, 180,180, 176, 175, 173, 172, 170, 170.

Most of their top 7 is only 15 years old, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some big jumps from them again next year.

Interesting, why do you think Colorado schools and kids would choose to ignore NXN and go to a lesser "national" meet if they were a part of a different region? They are already flying to NXR Southwest so it's just a different course against different teams.

Marvin Ridge from NC will be very competitive for a SE spot next year. They were 7th in SE this year with their #2 having a horrible race. He had run 15:40 on the same course twice already this year (Adidas and Great American) and ran a 16:58 at NXR to finish outside top 5. They still only finished 36 points out of 3rd, and easily finish 3rd if he has a normal race. They only lose one of their top 7 (return 1,3,4,5,6,7 from NXR). Only issue with the team is no real lowstick so they really need all 5 doing well as evidenced this year.

Niwot has all seven returners and why are you cherry picking speed ratings for Herriman but not for Niwot? Some of their boys had higher speed ratings at their state meet.

Palisades Charter took 6th* in the merge