Following Week of Saturday, October 1
The third week of the rankings focused hugely on the McQuaid meet, as the results of the meet's seeded AAA, AA, and A races led to a variety of switch-ups in the upper areas of the four classes' ranks. Two changes in the #1 spot were ushered in by the weekend's action, one from a huge performance at McQuaid and one from the other end of the state at Van Cortlandt Park in the New York City Mayor's Cup. A number of other meets such as the John Killian, St. Anthony's, Auburn, Brewster, and out-of-state at Paul Short and the New Jersey Shore Coaches meet also contributed to the dance of the teams in the rankings. But the McQuaid was queen of the action.
As with the Pre-States results last week, a bracketed number following a McQuaid result in the Last Week's Action column indicates a merge place. In a number of cases, teams switched order with each other in a race result versus merge results (Liverpool and Fairport is one particularly big example), and in that case the race result is given more weight. Results based on performances against teams of roughly the same size are better indicators of strength than merge results that bring in large to tiny schools in in one big result, but the merge does have some baseline value.
Some teams had a reduced squad in a McQuaid varsity race and instead put many of their strongest runners in the Sophomore competition. Some other teams were running partial squads or had a top runner missing possibly due to SAT testing, and we have tried to balance off strong performances at Pre-States versus lesser ones at McQuaid. But as always in the very messy sport of XC, the many different team stories lead to some chewy ranking debates that really have no right or wrong answer at this point of the season.
Cheers to all, and get out to the Manhattan at Van Cortlandt Park for action that just can't be beat..
