Following Week of Saturday, November 5
The last complete rankings for all classes were released for Week 6, two weeks ago. The action is all headed now for States and the CHSAA and PSAL championships this weekend, but we are doing an extended list of the Overall rankings to catch up on some recent team movements. A lot will likely change this weekend as top teams go for the titles, and we'll be coming back with the lists for all the classes after the next round of fireworks ends.
The first ranking criteria for the teams at this point is how successful they were in their most recent meet, which for most of them was a race at their Sectionals. A winning result was extra important as that is the first goal at a state qualifier meet. But for a team that was up against a top-ranked opponent in their SQ, a strong result such as for the Shenendehowa girls and a close loss such as for the Fairport guys was still given a lot of weight.
But the SQs are still qualifiers after all and not all teams needed to race at their top level to move on to States. We tried not to not mark down a champion that was running a little below their normal speed ratings when they had little competition in their SQ and whose goal was to save some energy for States.
And finally there is the unfortunate situation for the CHSAA schools for these rankings, as their own sectionals two weeks ago at Van Cortlandt Park or Sunken Meadows were not quite as pressing for the top teams as a battle between say the Liverpool and Fayetteville-Manlius guys. The CHSAA championship this weekend should provide the usual boost to team ratings and even things up for them when we resume with the full class rankings