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NY State - Top Boys Team Match-Up for 2004 |
... updated July 18, 2004 ...
| Pre-Season Look |
| This is a brief evaluation of possible
top boys XC teams in NY State for 2004 ... For starters, I'm not really
big on pre-season ranking of teams for a variety of reasons. I do
it for Section 3 teams to have some idea of team strength, but there can
be some real problems ... the first problem is knowing who will be on
the team in the coming year ... for nearly half of all teams, experience
has shown that one or more possible returning runners don't run the
following year (it's typically a #3, #4 or #5) runner ... the reason
might be injury, transfer to another school, displacement by new
runners, or just not wanting to run XC any more ... The ability of new
runners (usually coming up from junior high) is also difficult to
evaluate (this applies more to girls than guys) ... Secondly, a
pre-season evaluation is usually based on last year's results with input
from subsequent track meets ... Please Remember - last year's
results are only that - "last year's results" (and a lot can change) ...
While recent track performances may indicate a change in upcoming XC
performances, they frequently do not. I approach team ranking like individual ranking ... once the season starts, I disregard my pre-season ranking ... and ranking is based solely on actual results from the current season. |
| Identifying Possible Top Teams ... an obvious place to start is last year's Federation Championships ... Shenendehowa was clearly the best team, but all seven Shen starters were seniors, so their prospects for the coming season are unknown - even with a great program and a top runner like Dan McManamon, I need to see some results before adding them to the top teams in 2004. A table below lists some results from the 2003 Federation Championships ... I tossed out the seniors and looked at the results of possible returning runners (assuming all will be running for their respective teams) ... I applied two standard criteria to evaluate team strength, (1) team average time and (2) team score ... The top four teams are Lockport, Chaminade, FM (Fayetteville-Manlius) and Warwick Valley ... Guilderland and Monsignor Farrell also look good ... Lockport has the best team score and Chaminade has the best average team time ... In an upcoming article, I will discuss "team average time" - in general, it follows team score fairly closely with a few exceptions ... teams benefiting from "average time" evaluation are typically teams with a top runner (or two) much faster than the rest of the team - Tully was the perfect example in 2003 with Lomong & Luka (Tully was 14th at Feds by score but 4th by average time) ... apparently, "Average Time" evaluation will be used extensively in ranking teams for the new Nike Team Nationals (I hope it's used correctly because it can be very misleading if applied randomly as an absolute number). Three of the teams also raced
head-to-head at the NYSPHSAA State Class A Meet ... based on
average-time (non-seniors), the results are: So, Who's the best boys team in NY? ... I really don't know ... it seems fairly close ... but for pre-season, I would give a slight advantage to Lockport ... Another table below lists some track performances for individual team runners ... Here are some brief thoughts on several teams: Lockport ... appears to be the favorite entering the 2004 season ... top runner Mark Russell was not at full strength last season, so a healthy Mark Russell will obviously help ... all five returning runners ran well during track ... prospects look good. Fayetteville-Manlius ... the FM guys set many PRs during track ... I had the benefit of watching them compete during track, and my impression was they had gotten faster and stronger ... IF that translates into XC, Fayetteville-Manlius will be a serious contender to win State honors ... and their team may be a little deeper than earlier believed ... (maybe I'm biased for Section 3 teams). Chaminade ... obviously, a very good team ... has one of best runners in the State in Kevin McDermott and a good supporting cast ... Ryan McDermott (Kevin's younger brother) appears to be improving nicely ... I want to thank Greg Hoffman for sending me photos of several CHSAA runners on my top runner list. Warwick Valley ... Warwick Valley has some good young runners plus some apparent team depth ... they set a bunch of 3200m PRs during track ... the graduation of top runner Jake LaRoe hurts, but Warwick could be a real challenger. Monsignor Farrell ... despite the tragic loss of Rob Breen, Monsignor Farrell has some very good runners ... their track performances indicate they are improving and could be surprisingly strong against CHSAA rival Chaminade (and other State contenders).
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| 2003 NY Federation Meet Results for Returning Runners |
| The table information below was compiled from the official results of the 2003 Federation Meet at Bowdoin Park ... Non-Senior members of the various teams were excluded ... a few of the names and grades (as reported in the official results) may not be totally accurate, but it's good enough for these purposes ... the Team Average is the average time of the runners shown for each team ... the Team Score is the theoretical score using just the runners in the table. |
Team Team
Runner School Time Average Score
--------------------- -------------------- ------- --------- -------
Kevin McDermott - 11 Chaminade 16:23.6 17:19.9 67
Greg Hoffman - 11 Chaminade 17:20.0
Conor Hampel - 11 Chaminade 17:23.8
Ryan McDermott - 9 Chaminade 17:44.2
Conor McNamara - 10 Chaminade 17:47.7
Mark Russell - 11 Lockport 17:10.7 17:22.6 56
Lyle Tolli - 10 Lockport 17:11.7
Patrick Russell - 11 Lockport 17:18.6
Brett Finnan - 11 Lockport 17:27.4
John Haenle - 9 Lockport 17:44.7
Jared Burdick - 11 Fayetteville-Manlius 16:32.2 17:29.0 82
Owen Kimple - 10 Fayetteville-Manlius 17:25.2
Andrew McCann - 10 Fayetteville-Manlius 17:40.4
Tom Gruenewald - 9 Fayetteville-Manlius 17:40.7
Dan Marnell - 10 Fayetteville-Manlius 18:06.5
Michael Mark - 10 Warwick Valley 17:21.7 17:41.6 103
Michael Segal - 10 Warwick Valley 17:26.4
Pat Hayis - 10 ??? Warwick Valley 17:45.2
Jerry Greenlaw - 10 Warwick Valley 17:48.5
Louis Tafuto - 10 Warwick Valley 18:06.2
Brian Rhodes-Davey - 9 Guilderland 16:46.3 17:42.8 104
Seth Dubois - 10 Guilderland 17:12.9
Brian Dechants - 11 Guilderland 18:04.0
Justin Wager - 10 Guilderland 18:12.4
Kevin O'Connor - 10 Guilderland 18:18.3
Jeff Carbonella - 10 Monsignor Farrell 17:19.1 17:56.5 125
Marc Williamson - 11 Monsignor Farrell 17:50.0
Vito Cannavo - 10 Monsignor Farrell 17:55.2
Dan Lewis - 10 Monsignor Farrell 18:00.7
John Cassidy - 11 Monsignor Farrell 18:37.4
Ben White - 10 Liverpool 16:57.9 18:06.5 142
Colin Heenan - 9 Liverpool 18:02.7
Ethan Hickey - 8 Liverpool 18:20.3
Dan Mcelroy - 11 Liverpool 18:31.4
Kyle Kish - 10 Liverpool 18:39.9
Will Haskell - 11 Rush-Henrietta 17:20.4 18:08.6 141
Jon Gauthier - 11 Rush-Henrietta 17:41.2
Charles Ruhland - 11 Rush-Henrietta 18:28.4
Brett Dolan - 11 Rush-Henrietta 18:35.4
Ben DeGeorge - 11 Rush-Henrietta 18:37.7
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| Some 2004 Track Performances by Returning Team Runners | |
| Below are some available track performances by returning runners from various teams ... I realize some marks are probably not the best marks, but that type of accurate track information is difficult to find at times ... a "really accurate" track leaderboard is nearly impossible to make (many good performances go unreported for one reason or another). | |
1600m 3200m 3000mSt
===== ======= =======
Chaminade
===============
Kevin McDermott 4:30.5 9:33.0 9:27.5
Greg Hoffman 4:36.0 ---- ----
Conor Hampel 4:33.8 10:05.9 ----
Ryan McDermott 4:44.9 9:56.8 ----
Conor McNamara ---- ---- ----
FM
================
Jared Burdick 4:33.9 9:38.1 ----
Owen Kimple 4:23.1 9:56.3 ----
Andrew McCann 4:33.7 9:47.8 ----
Tom Gruenewald 4:44.5 9:47.3 ----
Dan Marnell 4:40.7 10:20.5 ----
Lockport
================
Mark Russell 4:16.4 9:19.1 ----
Patrick Russell 4:33.7 9:43.6 ----
Lyle Tolli 4:33.9 10:00.4 ----
Brett Finnan ---- ---- 10:21.6
John Haenle 4:37.2 10:03.6 ----
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1600m 3200m 3000mSt
===== ======= =======
Warwick Valley
================
Michael Mark 4:44.1 ---- ----
Michael Segal ---- 9:53.1 10:29.2
Jerry Greenlaw ---- 9:59.2 ----
Louis Tafuto 4:50.0 ---- ----
Frank Pfaffenberger 4:47.1 10:02.2 ----
Terrance Prial 4:54.7 10:03.0 ----
Anthony Campione ---- 10:23.7 10:34.5
Guilderland
================
Brian Rhodes-Devey 4:23.8 9:52.1 ----
Seth Dubois 4:41.2 9:43.0 ----
Brian Dechants ---- ---- 10:41.1
Justin Wager ---- ---- ----
Kevin O'Connor ---- ---- ----
Msg Farrell
================
Jeff Carbonella 4:27.9 9:50.3 ----
Marc Williamson 4:42.7 10:15.9 10:32.6
Vito Cannavo 4:43.2 10:07.5 10:02.2
Dan Lewis 4:41.2 9:51.3 9:53.5
John Cassidy 4:45.2 10:07.3 ----
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