New York State XC Season Guide - Girls 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season Intro | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It all started last year at Fultonville in late August with the local Braves team winning at home. It ended off more than three months later with first a trio of NY teams heading to Portland. Fayetteville-Manlius ended up claiming a ninth NXN national championship, with Saratoga and North Rockland taking a 4th and 10th place respectively. Kelsey Chmiel and Abbey Wheeler both broke into the top 10, the former taking 4th place overall. One week later, and it was another trio of New Yorkers - Sage Hurta, Jessica Lawson, and Kathryn Munks - finishing 10th, 11th, and 37th at Foot Locker Nationals in San Diego. This year promises much the same as FM is hinting towards a tenth national title, while Saratoga and North Rockland are expected to be running hot on the heels of the Hornets. A top three of Jessica Lawson, Kelsey Chmiel, and Claire Walters are being chased by far younger (for Lawson) and far older (for Walters) contenders for the title of Queen of the Trails. One change is that the season will wait until September 2nd to make its entrance, as Cheektowaga and the JFK Invitational will edge out the Fonda-Fultonville meet for this year's claimant to the role of NY XC kick-starter. For 2016 girls XC, we will see much of the same. Some teams have found the familiar, while others are heading into uncharted waters.. At the end of last July, Bill Meylan made national projections on Tully Runners that would nail three of the top four teams at last year's NXN, but then there was that national runner-up from California that no one knew about in the August because it had a preseason resume only a blindly optmistic coach could love. So you never know, but a few things we can say for sure in 2016 is that a large number of the top public school teams in the NYSPHSAA will not be running at the NY State Championshp due to weirdly outdated rules, and that races for the championship of many of the XC divisions will have a new preseason favorite. In the same-old same-old category, Fayetteville-Manlius will the frontrunner in Class A, Greenwich will lead Class D, and Notre Dame is hugely favored in the CHSAA of the NYC region. But in Class B a trio of Burnt Hills, Shoreham-Wading River, and Pearl River could all be seen as favorites, now a short ways ahead of reigning champ John Jay-Cross River. Class C has old-guard Bronxville and newbie Newfane vying to replace an East Aurora team that got bumped up to B. McKee Tech is even with champ Brooklyn Tech in the PSAL, while the Convent of the Sacred Heart has a seemingly big advantage over a depleted Hackley in the AIS. Back out west and it is the Nardin Academy which looks like it could be the top squad among the Buffalo area CHSAA teams. Working as always off the speed ratings compiled on the Tully Runners individual and team profiles, the New York State XC Season Guide provides a lot of team performance and historical data, along with many questions about who's going to be making news this year The season's guide is split into six sections, with this first segment devoted to a general overview of the coming XC season and then the second has a preview for the PSAL (Section 12) action, the dual CHSAA (Section 13) worlds centered around New York City and Buffalo, and the AIS (Section 14) independent schools also in and around NYC. The following four parts of the guide review NYSPHSAA class action for A, B, C, and D. 85 short profiles of the top teams add some extra depth about this year's big rivalries. The top teams are sorted on the average Tully Runners speed ratings (TR) of the top 5 returning runners, which is a convenient but certainly not optimal way to compare teams that are unbalanced or have a lot of new blood. The regression factored listings on Tully Runners are far more nuanced. There are always a lot of uncertainties about teams as we head into a new season with a host of talented young runners clamoring to be seen, so again just do a mind wipe of all information included here as soon as September rolls around. And as always, a big shout out to Steve Pisano, Tony Morales, Dan Pemrick, Bill Wende, Frank Healy, the Section 4 guys (Garrett Butters and Jeff Naylor), and Kyle Brazeil and VA's Lisa McArthur and the guy from Dobbs and all the other photographers who have done their best to catch the contorted faces of the runners and make these pages come alive with bright colors and dazzling finishes. Cheers to yet another XC season like no other. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The
Manhattan Eastern States leaders break from the shadows on the bridge
with a top 9 that includes (left to right) eventual winner Jessica
Lawson, Rachel McArthur (VA), Brianna Gess (NJ), Sage Hurta, Katelyn
Tuohy, Alex Harris, Kaitlyn Neal, Olivia Sargeant (PA), and Maria Coffin
(MD). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top NY Teams for 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Using the TR speed ratings for returning runners from last year without any adjustments for great track results, here's the list of how the top 10 NY teams stack up. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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