As of writing this post, the California cross country state meet just finished, and NXN hasn't happened yet, but I still feel like I have a good sense of what the top california boys teams will be next year and I want to rank them here.
1. Jesuit
Jesuit has a legendary program and convincingly autoqualified for NXN in 2024 while also returning their entire top 5 runners. I have no doubt that they will be national contenders next year, regardless of what occurs at NXN.
2. Matilda Torres
While this new program won't have much depth next year, it will return a powerful 1-2 punch in Hunter Hannah and Benjamin Fernandez, along with other key members to form a deadly scoring squad. However, they will be in trouble if any one of their runners has issues.
3. Ayala
Despite the team not running at the state meet due to no fault of their own, Ayala has proven through their entire season that they are deep and young. They will be led by this-year's fastest freshmen in California, Bryson Caganap, along with other sub-15 underclassmen, and several more sub-16 returners. It looks to be that 3 of Ayala's top 5 runners next year will be sophomores, and they will be dangerous for more years to come.
4. San Clemente
This team was absolutely astonishing this year. Coming into 2024, they were expected to not even make CIF finals; they graduated 5 of their top 7 from 2023 and their next best man transferred out of state, leaving their 7th runner from 2023 and other somewhat talented freshmen and sophomores to put something together. They did, and they thrived all the way to the state meet, where they placed 8th, returning their entire top 7. The best part is that their top 5 scorers were all sophomores.
5. Mira Costa
Mira Costa was consistently a top Californian team in 2024 with a ton of depth and little spread between their runners. They return 5 of their top 7 and most of their impressive depth, although 2025 seems to be the last year that they will be at the top for, as most of their top returners will be seniors.
6. Beckman
Beckman has quickly risen up in 2024 to become a widely known team after an impressive upset at the Clovis invitational against nationally top-5 ranked team Crater and maintained that spot as California's best until the state meet, where they were divisional state champs but failed to autoqualify for NXN. Something similar happened in 2023 too, where they were 8th in division 1 after most of their runners ran worse than at clovis. Despite these inconsistencies at the state meet, Beckman has proven that they can develop runners very well and they return 3 of their top 7, but those 3 will be very lethal and they will return some depth to fill the rest of their varsity squad.
7. Woodbridge
I feel like Woodbridge will be the biggest wildcard going into 2025; they have low stick Aidan Antonio, who will look to be one of the best individuals next year, along with their entire team besides three seniors(which are nowhere near the top of the team).This team is young and could be deep with their sheer amount of returners, but they have had several inconsistencies throughout the 2024 season. I believe that this team is very talented, as shown by their top 5 runners' 3 mile season bests as freshmen: 14:35, 15:27, 15:30, 15:30, and 15:45. Woodbridge has received some excellent freshmen over the last few years, and that translates to potential, although the team must patch their inconsistencies in order to fulfill that potential and be a state contender.
8. Vacaville
This team is similar to Woodbridge (in fact they beat them by 1 point at the state meet) in that they will have a stupid amount of returners, only graduating four seniors, but two of those seniors scored for the team in 2024. Vacaville will have great depth, but may lack a good low stick unless Cooper Stream makes a big jump going into his junior year. This team will have several sub-15 3 mile runners, but we will need to see just how well they develop. If they do well, they can easily be an NXN contender in 2025 and 2026.
9. Redondo Union
despite graduating a large, top-heavy senior class before the 2025 season, Redondo's huge roster will brute-force the school to remain competitive. They return a powerful freshmen duo in Mario Montoya and Matteo Sanchez, along with just enough others to have a strong top 5, but not much more runners past that. Surprisingly, Redondo Union won't seem to be able to have much depth in 2025 unless they can develop their returners outside their top 5.
10. Martin Luther King
This team was heavily favored going into the 2024 season and the gauntlet of the NXN qualifying meets, but was unable to make it to state despite this. Similarly to Woodbridge and Vacaville, MLK will surely have a strong low stick in Maximo Zavaleta and lots of depth in their sheer amount of returners. This team's top runners are also very talented, as outside of the obvious case of Maximo Zavaleta, Logan Carlson ran 10:01 in the 3200m as a freshmen and Bradley Quezada ran 15:28 as a freshmen. However, this team has been the least consistent out of the top-ranked California teams in 2024 and needs to fix them in order to do their best.
