The NY State cross country season is just about ready to start ... Teams are getting the required number of practices, and meets will be starting this weekend (but many more next weekend) ... Others States have already started, and I have speed rated some of the early out-of-State meets ... I will try to post more out-of-State meet speed ratings this season, but NY State will be my first priority as usual ... most out-of-State speed ratings may get posted following that weekend ... and I will focus on the top teams and individuals.
NY State Boys ... After another review, the overall Boy's team rankings still seem very close ... Not sure how this will come out at the end, but it should be interesting following the boys teams throughout the season ... I am looking forward to the individual performances because NY has some of the best individual talent of any State nationally.
NY State Girls ... I have 3 NY State
teams ranked in the top 7
nationally ...
MileSplit Saucony Flo50 Pre-Season Rankings have the same 3 teams
ranked in their top 6 nationally ... Fayetteville-Manlius,
Saratoga and Shenendehowa appear to be podium-quality teams
for NXN ... Not certain how accurate the current scheduling information
is (team invitational schedules do change
),
but the initial "speed-ratable" invitational races for each seems to be:
... Saratoga - Springstead Invitational (Sept
11)
... Shenendehowa - Crusader Pre-State Meet (Sept 19)
... Fayetteville-Manlius - Vernon-Verona-Sherrill Invite (Sept
12)
Saratoga, Shenendehowa and Guilderland have a tri-dual meet scheduled for Sept 8th at Saratoga Park, but not sure if they will run all-out for this type of meet (the Suburban Council League has a championship meet on Oct 31).
Can the FM Girls re-load with a new
high-quality runner? ... I will wait for their first meet before saying
something
.
Great Oak California Girls ... The MileSplit Saucony Flo50 Pre-Season Rankings have the Great Oak Girls ranked #1 nationally ... This is not surprising because Great Oak is very talented and there are legitimate questions about FM and Saratoga ... A MileSplit video by Destiny Collins gives a little insight into team dynamics (link at: http://www.milesplit.com/articles/161052-destiny-collins-day-in-the-life-great-oak-xc-training-camp) ... This team may be very hard to beat.
The current MileSplit USA rankings focus very strongly on the track ability of the Great Oak girls ... and it is exceptionally impressive ... For example, here are the 3200 meter track PRs of the top Great Oak girls ... I added converted 3000 meter times because the NY girls run 3000m (not 3200m):
Converted
Great Oak Gr 3200m 3000m
Destiny Collins 12 9:53.79 9:13.5
Kiyena Beatty 11 10:36.20 9:53.0
Sydney Belus 11 10:42.76 9:59.2
Skyler Bollinger 12 10:45.73 10:01.9
Evelyn Mandel 11 10:47.85 10:03.9
Sandra Pflughoft 10 10:48.46 10:04.4
Desiree Stinger 12 10:48.47 10:04.4
Emily Clause 12 10:53.91 10:09.6
New Yorkers will recognize those 3000m times as really
good ... But - a number of years ago I statistically
correlated track times
with XC speed ratings ... I did it using only NY
runners ... When tested against out-of-State runners, particularly
California, the correlation did not work nearly as well as for NY
runners ... A little extra research found that California runners
(generally from top-to-bottom) run faster distance times in track than
NY runners ... NOT sure why
,
but it exists with XC comparisons ... People other than myself have
noticed this and asked questions.However, those Great Oak track times are the best I have ever seen for a girls team entering an XC season ... The 2004 Saratoga Girls entered their XC season with 3000m times of 9:24.09 (Nicole Blood) with a gap to 10:01 to 10:12 for the other scorers [two of the girls (Caitlin Lane and Hannah Davidson) were 8th-graders during that outdoor track season] ... At the 2004 Footlocker Northeast qualifier, the top four Saratoga girls finished 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th - the girl who finished 2nd (Aislinn Ryan of Warwick Valley), won Footlocker Nationals ... Saratoga went on to win NXN 2004 by scoring 51 points - the team that finished 2nd with 125 points (Smoky Hill CO) had three Footlocker finalists on their team.
Great Oak's first XC invitational is the Cool Breeze Invite (Sept 5); I believe Destiny Collins is skipping this meet ... their top athletes are scheduled to run at the Woodbridge Invite (Sept 19), Bob Firman Invite Idaho (Sept 26), Clovis Invite (Oct 10) and the Mt SAC Invite (Oct 24) ... I will be speed rating all of these meets.
Results - http://www.albanyrunningexchange.org/results/textDisplay.php?ID=5100
Some Saratoga Girls and Boys (and other Section 2 high school runners) ran the Silks & Satins 5K road race (certified 5K) ... Selected results shown below ...
Silks & Satins 5K
July 25, 2015 - Saratoga Springs, NY
Timing by ARE Event Productions
PLACE NAME AGE SEX CITY ST TIME PACE
1 Aidan Tooker 17 M Saratoga Springs NY 15:09 4:53
2 Chuck Terry 33 M Albany NY 15:42 5:04
3 Ethan Carey 16 M Queensbury NY 15:50 5:06
4 Aaron Lozier 26 M Albany NY 16:04 5:11
5 Thomas O'Grady 30 M Latham NY 16:14 5:14
BOYS High School Runners High School XC 2015
PLACE NAME AGE SEX CITY ST TIME PACE
1 Aidan Tooker 17 M Saratoga Springs NY 15:09 4:53 Saratoga
3 Ethan Carey 16 M Queensbury NY 15:50 5:06 Queensbury
12 Kevin Gideon 17 M Ballston Spa NY 16:39 5:22 Burnt Hills
14 Trevor Peck 17 M Saratoga Springs NY 16:52 5:26 Saratoga
18 Will Howe 15 M Ballston Spa NY 17:05 5:30 Saratoga
GIRLS High School Runners High School XC 2015
PLACE NAME AGE SEX CITY ST TIME PACE
21 Julia Flower 17 F Schenectady NY 17:27 5:37 Schalmont
23 Kelsey Chmiel 13 F Greenfield Center NY 17:41 5:42 Saratoga
30 Peyton Engborg 14 F Greenfield NY 17:55 5:46 Saratoga
34 Alexandra Delnicki 14 F Ballston Spa NY 18:13 5:52 Saratoga
36 Paris Fenoff 14 F Ballston Spa NY 18:13 5:52 Saratoga
39 Amelia Mahoney 16 F Saratoga Springs NY 18:17 5:53 Saratoga
43 Gabrielle Robens 17 F Saratoga Springs NY 18:30 5:58 Saratoga
48 Ciara Knott 14 F Saratoga Springs NY 18:44 6:02 Saratoga
50 Keellyn Cummings 14 F Wilton NY 18:48 6:03 Saratoga
57 Kathryn Tenney 13 F Albany NY 19:07 6:09 Colonie
59 Hunter Von Ahn 14 F Saratoga Springs NY 19:08 6:10 Saratoga
61 Erin Carey 17 F Saratoga Springs NY 19:19 6:13 Saratoga
62 Carolyn Pellegrini 17 F Loudonville NY 19:19 6:13 Colonie
65 Samantha Vetter 15 F Greenfield Center NY 19:21 6:14 Saratoga
73 Kerry Flower 15 F Schenectady NY 19:52 6:24 Schalmont
82 Carley Vetter 15 F Greenfield Center NY 20:08 6:29 Saratoga