2024 Niwot are the Best HS Boys Team of all Time

if by your metric of best is runners outside their top 5, then maybe.

but if your metric is the metric everyone uses: top 5, then those pair of brothers were on the same team

write this again when has 3 sub 8:40 dudes and the 4th-best dude has the nxn course record.

newbury would go 1-5 against niwot.

Yeah nah. I don't care how many brothers they had newbury park averaged 14:14 and won a national meet with 29 points. Niwot might be able to do something crazy next year considering they only graduate their 2 and their 5. 2024 Niwot wouldn't even have gotten 2nd in the 2021 runninglane race, it would have been Cheyenne Mountain.

No.

But they are certainly one of the best.

I think the list is something like:

1. Newbury 2021

2. Newbury 2022

3. Herriman 2023 or Niwot 2024

4. Herriman 2023 or Niwot 2024

5. Newbury 2019

6. Cheyenne Mountain 2021

7. American Fork 2023

8. Loudoun Valley 2018

A whole bunch of teams

So Niwot is only better than Newbury Park if we take away all of Newbury Park's best runners? How stoned were you when you pressed "create thread" ?

You do know there was cross country before 2018, right?

I'm aware.

However, given the average times being run on various courses throughout the country, I have a hard time believing that any of the pre 2018 teams would beat any of those that I mentioned. Maybe a bit of recency bias, but lets not inflate how good some of the teams back in the day were, great for the era, but wouldn't stand much of a chance against some of the post covid teams.

If this was a girls list, it would be almost entirely pre 2018 teams, but we're talking about the boys right now.

I don't know if you can consider them the best high school team of all time when they are a club team and pull kids from out of a single school's boundaries.

downvoted for putting cheyenne mountain 2021 and newbury park 2019 too high

All the runners are on the Niwot HS team.

Top 5 NP 2021 absolutely dusts these guys. It wouldn't even be a competition.
It doesn't matter if Niwot has 20 guys running sub 15:45 5K's when 2021 NP 1-6 are an all time team.

You could take out a whole pair of those brothers from 2021 NP and they still have enough guys to be favored vs Niwot.

L&L or Colin/Aaron would go 1 and 2 by a ton.

Appleford and Martinez would be in the mix with Niwot 1-4. 16 on that NXN rain course is probably pretty close to sub 15 at that Runninglane course. It'd be close.

Doshi being far back wouldn't matter since Niwot's 5 would be far back too.

Neither Herriman nor Niwot are ranked that high. Especially in an “all together” race because they don’t have any low sticks.

In fact, this Niwot team may have been one of the weakest NXN champions in history. Top 3 dudes are all like 9:10-9:20 dudes.

There are a good amount of teams putting 3-5 ahead of their one.

Data Nerds are supposed to research.

That’s funny. They run at altitude and are young. These guys beat a ton of sub 9 guys. This was one of the strongest fields in nxn history.

I think if Culpepper is where his genetics & talent suggests he should be next fall and everyone else progresses as you would expect, then Niwot is the consensus 2nd best team of all time a year from now. But they’re still a long way from eclipsing NP according to any conventional understanding of what makes an excellent XC team. But it is a fair point to suggest that they have the greatest JV team of all time this year. I certainly have no recollection of anyone else that had a JV team that consistently averaged well under 16.

Speaking of which, anyone know what happened to Culpepper this season? Injury? Illness?

Culpepper was a close runner up to NXN Champ Charlie Vause at Desert Twighlight in September.

Arcadia and CBA in early 2010s'. Those teams could probably beat at least AF 2023 an LV 2018. Athletes from earlier can definitely compete with the athletes now.

2021 Newbury Park was the most absurd HS XC team ever assembled, it will never be recreated. Their 5th runner ran 8:51 and was runner up at the CA Meet. They had the 3 best runners in the country and another one top 10 (Who won nationals the following year).

Forget just XC, how many other HS sports teams in US history have had the 3 best athletes in a given year from a single school?

Too bad half the team was beaten by a girl this year....

For example, in 2018, London’s #1 was 15:32 & their 5th was 15:52. Niwot’s #1 was 15:52 & their 5th 16:24.

It rained this year and not in 2018, but to put Niwot or this team is nuts.

Great Oak, who didn’t even win 2019, had a 5 man spread from 15:52 to 16:02. It rained that year.

The point is, there are countless teams better.

If they are young, let’s let them mature and actually run fast and then decide.