McQuaid Invitational - How big of a deal is it?

To be fair most ny runners have 5 races in a row before footlocker except for teams like fm and Corning who skip feds.

Lilpump23 wrote:

To be fair most ny runners have 5 races in a row before footlocker except for teams like fm and Corning who skip feds.

Maybe athletic.net isn't listing all of their races, but that doesn't appear to be the case looking at the boys who ran at Footlocker in 2017

Two boys from NY and two from CA were there. Here are the dates they raced in November and December along with their place and time at Footlocker in addition to their highest speed rating heading into the meet.

Nathan Lawler of NY - 28th place at FL in 16:15 - Top two speed ratings, which come from races in NY were 193 and 192

Raced on the following dates in Nov and Dec

Nov 4, 11, 25

Dec 9

Mason Gatewood of NY - 36th place at FL in 16:37 - Top two speed ratings, which come from races in NY were 192 and 191

Raced on the following dates in Nov and Dec

Nov 18, 25

Dec 9

Meika Beaudoin-Rousseau of CA - 21st place at FL in 16:01 - Top two speed ratings, which come from races in CA were 191 and 189

Raced on the following dates in Nov and Dec

Nov 1, 11, 25

Dec 2, 9

Darius Riley of CA - 22nd place at FL in 16:01 - Top two speed ratings, which come from races in CA were 188 and 184

Raced on the following dates in Nov and Dec

Nov 1, 10, 18, 25

Dec 2, 9

So you've got two CA kids whose best speed ratings were 191 and 188 finish 15 and 36 seconds ahead of two NY kids whose best speed ratings were 193 and 192.

A 188 kid shouldn't be beating a 193 kid by 15 seconds (in fact it should be exactly the other way around) and a 192 kid by 36 seconds, unless of course the speed ratings are off and/or the environment is factoring in to play, both of which I would say are true.

For the record, the actual speed ratings given at FL were as follows:

Beaudoin-Rousseau - 185 (6 points below previous best rating in a CA race)

Riley - 185 (3 points below previous best rating in a CA race)

Lawler - 180 (13 points below previous best rating in a NY race)

Gatewood - 172 (20 points below previous best rating in a NY race)

The 4:18 miler you’re talking about is Steve Schulz who was 12 at NXN beating every California runner in the race.

Burnt Hills top 5 have been running together for several years, and there is a lot of data about their relative abilities. Berg, Brennan, Gillooley and Hunziker (all seniors) have been running varsity XC since they were freshman.

They appropriately were very highly ranked in the pre-season based on who they had coming back and the sum total of their performances last year. It's clear that rankings very recently were still based on potential as none of their races yet this year really justified maintaining their high ranking, so it's not surprising that strong and deep Dana Hills and Smithtown teams beat them at McQuaid.

It's been pretty clear watching from afar that while Berg and (especially) Brennan are showing good improvement over last year, there are issues at the 3-5 scoring positions compared to what was expected going into the year.

(in the order they finished at McQuaid:

1) Berg, who won the race has been their consistent #1 for a while now, and is running about 25-35 seconds faster than last year.

2) Brennan, who has significantly closed the gap with Berg this year was mostly their #3 last year and is running 25-50 seconds faster than last year.

3) Hunziker was mostly the slowest of these 5 runners last year and has yet to run as fast as he did as a sophomore.

4) Metacarpa was mostly their #4 last year and is running 15-20 seconds slower so far this year.

5) Gillooley was mostly their #2 last year (running with or just behind Berg) and ran 44 seconds slower at McQuaid than last year. Reports suggest a health/injury issue

The season's not over. Burnt Hills definitely has the potential to finish as high as they were ranked in the pre-season, if they are healthy. If not healthy, they likely won't qualify for NXN as a team, since they are not deep. For a public school they have a very small enrollment by the standards of national XC powers (comparable to a Division 4 school in California's Southern Section).

New Rankings Per Milesplit:

1) Loudoun Valley

2) Great Oak

3) Fayetteville-Manlius

4) Wheaton Warrenville South

5) Dana Hills

6) American Fork

7) CBA

8) Weddington

9) Claremont

10) Loyola

11) La Costa Canyon

12) Bishop Hendricken

13) Dakota Ridge

14) Kamiakin

15) La Salle

16) Smithtown West

17) Hersey

18) Edina

19) Flower Mound

20) Bolles

21) Burnt Hills

22) St. Francis

23) Skyridge

24) Newbury Park

25) Lewis and Clark

Seven California teams in the top 25. Clovis this weekend will be a helluva meet. #2, #5, #22, and #24 racing against each other in the championship race

Could Cali get 2 at-large bids (on top of 2 auto qualifiers) for NXN this year?

Woodward Park, where the Clovis Invite and CA state meet are run, is about 60-65 seconds slower than Woodbridge for the boys.

Today Dana Hills ran at Clovis and had an average top-5 time of 15:56. Their average top-5 time at the Dana Hills Invite was 65 seconds faster, 14:51. Woodbridge and the Dana Hills Invite course run almost exactly the same speed if racing under the same temperature, which means in the morning at Dana Hills and at night at Woodbridge.

Look at the team scores below. Dana Hills was closer to the 7th place team than they were the 3rd place team. I would say Dana Hills is 5th best in California right now, as Loyola likely slots ahead of them.

041 - 15:22 - Great Oak

142 - 15:44 - Newbury Park

154 - 15:45 - West Ranch

214 - 15:56 - Dana Hills

239 - 15:59 - Dublin

240 - 16:01 - St. Francis (Mt View)

245 - 16:01 - Crescenta Valley

265 - 16:05 - Ridgeview

Dana Hills average top-5 time of 15:08 at McQuaid would translate to about 14:53-14:56 at Woodbridge or the Dana Hills Invite and then 15:53-16:01 at Woodwark Park.

Put Smithtown and Burnt-Hills in today's Clovis race with equivalent performances to McQuaid, which means adding a minimum of 45 seconds to each person's time and Smithtown ends up in 9th with about 285 points while Burnt-Hills ends up in 10th with about 305 points.

Berg's projected time of 15:19 at Clovis based on his race at McQuaid place him right around a handful of guys that averaged right around 9:15-9:20 in the 3200 last track season. Who would have guessed?

Dana Hills won the race and they aren’t even a top 10 team in California.

Tully NY speed ratings flaw wrote:

Dana Hills won the race and they aren’t even a top 10 team in California.

So who are the 10 ahead of them?

Meylan put up an article on his page in response to this thread or one that was similar. It was interesting to see his justification for Amber Trotter having a higher speed rating than Tuohy has so far. Basically it went like this "I was following 3 of the NY girls very closely so I definitely had their speed ratings correct. Trotter demolished them, so instead of realizing I had those NY girls a bit over-rated all along, I instead raised them a few points higher yet and that meant I had to put Trotter into the stratosphere."

You clearly have some bias towards Dana hills. Lol Dana hills not top 10 team???? You fail to recognize that Cole Stark and Hayden Stein both had off days. Sure, Dana would’ve not beaten Great Oak, but they would’ve been closer to Newbury Park.

Another point, Dana competed at McQuaid and then competed at Clovis the following week. That’s two weeks of intensive traveling. Dana Hills is definitely a Top 10 if not Top 5 team right now.

based off of head to head competition throughout the season.

From CA

1. Great Oak

2. Newbury Park

3. West Ranch

4. Loyola

5. Claremont

6. La Costa Canyon

7. Thousand Oaks

8. Long Beach Poly

9. Granada

10. Laguna Beach

11. Dana Hills

Just kidding

Dana’s probably 5th