National Team Rankings as of Nov. 13, these ONLY include states that have already had their NXN Regional races! That means that of this update, the only regions included are the Northwest, Midwest and Heartland. I will add to this list as other regions finish up.
Boys Top 30 Teams –
1. North Central WA – Washington 3A State Champion; NXN-Northwest Champion
2. York IL – Illinois 3A State Champion; NXN-Midwest Champion
3. Carmel IN – Indiana State Champion; NXN-Midwest Runner-up
4. Kamiakin WA – Washington 3A State Runner-up; NXN-Northwest Runner-up
5. Summit OR – Oregon 5A State Champion; NXN-Northwest third place
6. Bismarck ND – North Dakota A State Champion; NXN-Heartland Champion
7. Highland Milford MI – Michigan Division 1 State Champion
8. Dowling Catholic IA – Iowa 4A State Champion; NXN-Heartland Runner-up
9. Seattle Prep WA – Washington 3A State fourth place; NXN-Northwest fourth place
10. Cincinnati St. Xavier OH – Ohio Division 1 State Champion; NXN-Midwest third place
11. Fort Wayne Carroll IN – Indiana State Runner-up; NXN-Midwest seventh place (without key scorers)
12. Edina MN – Minnesota 2A State Runner-up; NXN-Heartland third place
13. Stillwater MN – Minnesota 2A State Champion; NXN-Heartland fourth place
14. Columbus North IN – Indiana State sixth place; NXN-Midwest fourth place
15. Lyons Township IL – Illinois 3A State third place; NXN-Midwest fifth place
16. Valparaiso IN – Indiana State third place; NXN-Midwest sixth place
17. Warsaw Community IN – Indiana State fourth place
18. Hamilton Southeastern IN – Indiana State fifth place
19. Perham MN – Minnesota 1A State Champion; NXN-Heartland fifth place
20. Wayzata MN – Minnesota 2A State third place; NXN-Heartland sixth place
21. Madison West WI – Wisconsin Division 1 State Champion
22. Westfield IN – Indiana State seventh place
23. Waterford Mott MI – Michigan Division 1 State Runner-up
24. Jesuit OR – Oregon 6A State Runner-up; NXN-Northwest fifth place
25. Siuslaw OR – Oregon 4A State Champion; NXN-Northwest sixth place
26. Nathan Hale WA – Washington 3A State third place; NXN-Northwest seventh place
27. Central Valley WA – Washington 4A State Champion; NXN-Northwest eighth place
28. Gig Harbor WA – Washingotn 4A State third place; NXN-Northwest ninth place
29. Mt. Spokane WA – Washington 3A State fifth place
30. Bozeman MT – Montana 2A State Champion; NXN-Northwest Open Champion
Girls Top 30 Teams –
1. Coeur D' Alene ID – Idaho 5A State Champion; NXN-Northwest Champion
2. Camas WA – Washington 4A State Champion; NXN-Northwest Runner-up
3. Carmel IN – Indiana State Champion; NXN-Midwest Champion
4. Naperville North IL – Illinois 3A State Champion; NXN-Midwest Runner-up
5. Wayzata MN – Minnesota 2A State Champion; NXN-Heartland Champion
6. Birmingham Seaholm MI – Michigan Division 1 State Champion
7. Grosse Pointe South MI – Michigan Division 1 State Runner-up
8. New Trier IL – Illinois 3A State fourth place; NXN-Midwest third place
9. Grant OR – Oregon 6A State Champion
10. Arrowhead WI – Wisconsin Division 1 State Champion; NXN-Heartland fourth place (without key scorers)
11. Lake Park IL – Illinois 3A State Runner-up
12. Mason OH – Ohio Division 1 State Champion; NXN-Midwest fourth place
13. Glenbard West IL – Illinois 3A State third place
14. Saline MI – Michigan Division 1 State third place
15. Pleasant Valley IA – Iowa 4A State Champion; NXN-Heartland ninth place (without key scorers)
16. Glacier Peak WA – Washington 3A State Champion; NXN-Northwest third place
17. West Lafayette IN – Indiana State Runner-up; NXN-Midwest fifth place
18. Neenah WI – Wisconsin Division 1 State Runner-up; NXN-Heartland fifth place (without key scorers)
19. Eagan MN – Minnesota 2A State Runner-up; NXN-Heartland Runner-up
20. Palatine IL – Illinois 3A State fifth place; NXN-Midwest sixth place
21. Tahoma WA – Washington 4A State Runner-up
22. South Eugene OR – Oregon 6A State fifth place; NXN-Northwest fourth place
23. St. Mary's Academy OR – Oregon 6A State Runner-up; NXN-Northwest fifth place
24. Jesuit OR – Oregon 6A State third place; NXN-Northwest sixth place
25. Sunset OR – Oregon 6A State fourth place
26. Fort Wayne Carroll IN – Indiana State sixth place; NXN-Midwest seventh place
27. Yorkville IL – Illinois 2A State Champion; NXN-Midwest eighth place
28. Prospect IL – Illinois 3A State 12th place; NXN-Midwest ninth place
29. Columbus North IN – Indiana State third place; NXN-Midwest tenth place
30. Dowling Catholic IA – Iowa 4A State fifth place; NXN-Heartland third place
Note: For clarification, these are how my rankings are derived:
1. Team finish at NXN Regionals
2. Team finish at State Meet (if the team didn’t run at NXN Regionals)
3. Region ranking (meaning I don’t rank Team A and Team B as #3 and 5 in their region, but then switch order and rank them #13 and 11 in the national rankings)
4. Caliber of performance of the top five athletes over the course of the season (with the greatest weighting on NXN National performance, followed by NXN Regional performance, followed by State Meet performance, followed by BEST results since mid October, followed by BEST results since early October, etc.).
This does not, unfortunately, label the absolute best teams because not every team (and the teams they previously raced against) will run exactly the same at every meet they attend. For example, the Stillwater MN boys did not have a great day at NXN-Heartland, and as such they have to be ranked behind teams that did run well (and beat them), but that doesn’t mean they were not the better team this year – just on that day. If one looks at Stillwater’s season as a whole, you would have a hard time saying they weren’t on par with Bismarck ND, the top finishing team at the Heartland meet.
For teams that are missing runners during the NXN series or at the state meet, I will make exceptions for IF their runners compete in at least one of the championship (State/NXR/NXN) meets. You can see examples of this in the girls Heartland rankings, where Arrowhead WI didn’t run their full varsity squad and didn’t get penalized for it, maintaining their HL#2 ranking despite finishing fourth at NXN-HL. Same with the Fort Carroll IN boys.
Note, also, that once we get to NXN Nationals, I try to keep in line with the finish order there, but if you’ve noticed my rankings in previous years there are some cases in which that doesn’t happen… with NXN as deep and elite as it is, there is often very little difference at the national meet between, say the #5 team and #10 team. As such, a slightly off day or slightly good day can result in significant movement in team scoring, exaggerating the difference between the teams. Because of this extreme situation, it seems more reasonable to not going STRICTLY by the finishing position at NXN Nationals if there is a SIGNIFICANT difference in the teams over the course of the season (again, with most significant weighting of results going back to NXN Nationals, NXN Regionals, State meet, best since mid October, etc.). The most recent examples of that would be the NXN#6 American Fork boys last year: American Fork soundly beat NXN#3 Davis UT at NXN-Southwest, and at Utah State, and their caliber of performances throughout the season indicated they were probably the third best team in the nation. But they finished sixth in Portland as one of their runners had a rough day. The difference was so significant that I looked for a reasonable place to move them up to and came to the conclusion that the two point difference between the fifth place finisher, Palatine IL ( who beat American Fork 255-257 in the race and had a team time of 12 seconds SLOWER than American Fork, and was an at-large team after finishing third at NXN-MW to two teams finishing behind American Fork) wasn’t significant enough to stop me from moving American Fork up a spot, but the gap between American Fork and fourth place Arcadia CA (183-257 in points, 81:00-81:41 in total team time, not to mention Arcadia CA looking like the best team in their region over the course of the season) wasn’t small enough to allow me to jump American Fork over them, leaving American Fork ranked fifth at the end of the year despite looking like the third best team that year, and despite finishing sixth at the national championship race.
It's too bad the Michigan girls teams didn't run NXN midwest. However, 3 of the Grosse Pointe runners did (as did Jamie Morrissey, who placed 3 in Michigan state meet). The 3 GP girls averaged 57 sec slower at NXN than at MI state (Morrissey ran over 2 minutes slower at NXN). If you assume their other runners were likewise affected, and plug in those times, they would have placed 4th at NXN midwest with 141 pts.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's a fair assumption, since runners aren't likely to run as well if neither team nor individual honors are at stake. For example, it could be that Schwartz was running slower in order to run with Firl. A fairer assumption might be Olling (9th place) who ran 41 seconds slower or Carey (Boys 3rd place) who ran 24 seconds slower.
ReplyDeleteAn argument could be made that Seaholm should rate above Carmel. At NXN-MW, Carmels's top 5 average time was 92 sec. behind Erba. At Michigan state champs, Seaholm's top 5 average was 71 seconds behind Erin Finn. Assuming that Erba's and Finn's races were roughly equivalent (a reasonable assumption), Seaholm ran a better race at State's than Carmel did at NXN-MW.
Well, I'm sure we can both agree it would be best to see the result, but speculating is fun.
DeleteSure it's possible Schwartz purposely ran slower, to pace Firl. It's also possible Firl latched on to her to run a great race; or had an off day at MI state. I'm just going by raw data, which is very limited here. (Morrissey (#3 at MI) certainly could have been competing for ind honors, and didn't do well at NXN).
The Finn-to-Seaholm-vs-Erba-to-Seaholm comparison is interesting... but is a bit more removed from data. I wouldn't want to claim Erba is better than Finn, but perhaps she was pushed more (Finn won by 0:27, Erba by 0:08). Also, that type of analysis didn't work for the Grosse Pointe runners. Firl had - by far - the relatively best day, but still didn't come as close to Erba as she did to Finn.
Ah well, maybe next year they can RUN
I don't look at how individual teams run at race A vs. race B. However, I do look at how ALL individuals from race A run at race B. That's - in part - why I have the Michigan State meet running about 48 seconds faster than the NXN Midwest girls race (and about 41 seconds faster than the NXN Midwest boys race).
ReplyDeleteI understand - and I really appreciate your analysis. But if the "ALL individuals" are 99% different (ok, 98%, we've found 5 girls who ran both), how do you account for strength of field vs toughness/speed of course? (Not trying to be critical, I'm just wondering how it's done - thanks)
DeleteIf you add 48 sec. to Seaholm's state champs times and placed them in NXN-MW, they would score about 88 points, about the same as Carmel. Also, interestingly, adding 41 sec. to Milford Boy's state times and placed them in NXN-MW, they would score 160 , about the same as Carmel boys.
DeleteMy point is that it's hard to rank Michigan teams where they might belong, because, unfortunately, they can't run in NXN.
As mentioned in the discussion on the post dealing specifically with this stuff, the "course A is XX seconds faster than course B" is talking about a specific level of performance (in this case, for runners that run 15:10 for the NXN-MW boys or 15:17 for the NXN-MW girls, which obviously didn't happen and would have been the best performance in HS girls XC history). The seconds comparison is used as the basis for the multiplier to use between the courses.
DeleteLong story short, using my handy-dandy-converter-tool using the course comparisons I came up with, Seaholm's and GPS's times at MI State would equate to this at NXN-MW:
3 - Aubrey Wilberding - 12 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 17:55.9 => 18:55.7
10 - Tess Wilberding - 12 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 18:16.4 => 19:17.4
12 - Marissa Dobry - 9 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 18:23.9 => 19:25.3
17 - Rachel Dadamio - 10 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 18:27.9 => 19:29.5
27 - Audrey Belf - 10 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 18:32.8 => 19:34.7
82 - Julia Demko - 10 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 19:21.0 => 20:25.6
103 - Danielle Bentzley - 11 - Birmingham Seaholm MI - 19:38.9 => 20:44.4
1 - Hannah Meier - 12 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 17:34.5 => 18:33.1
7 - Ersula Farrow - 10 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 18:05.3 => 19:05.6
11 - Kelsie Schwartz - 11 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 18:22.9 => 19:24.2
26 - Haley Meier - 12 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 18:32.5 => 19:34.4
43 - Mary Spencer - 10 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 18:56.8 => 20:00.0
61 - Christina Firl - 12 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 19:05.8 => 20:09.5
66 - Megan Sklarski - 10 - Grosse Pointe South MI - 19:07.4 => 20:11.2
Which would put Seaholm just behind New Trier for fourth, and GPS between West Lafayette and Palatine.
DeleteDefinitely too bad that Michigan teams weren't able to be there! Because until that happens, all of this is unfortunately hypothetical.
BTW, here's an analysis of individuals. I've ID'd 67 girls who ran both IL state (any class) and NXN-Midwest. On average, they ran 2:06 slower. Of course, that includes some who bombed at State, others who bombed at NXN. Take those out and it's still 2:03 difference. It should be a little less at the top (fast) end, and more at the high end, but didn't actually turn out that way.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, shows what a perfect day/course it was at IL, and rough day/course at NXN-MW
I will make a new post reviewing the statistical analysis later today.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, thanks
DeleteIt's too bad Nathan Hale and Central Valley didn't perform better at NXN-NW. I have zero doubt they are better than some teams in that top 10. But I know you have to be consitent each race despite illness etc. (or be very very deep like North Central in case you do lose a runner, it doen't make too much of a difference lol).
ReplyDelete