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So what do the results of the NXN Girls Virtual Meet mean? Is it really true that none of the teams heading out to Portland the last dozen years have been on par with the first champions, a team that ran more than 5 TR points or 15 seconds below their projected ratings? The answer is probably yes. The Saratoga 2004 team had four runners who could churn at the 150 TR level, and no team has been able to assemble such an amazing core of talent since. None of the top four of Nicole Blood, Hannah Davidson, Lindsey Ferguson, and Caitlin Lane was a senior in 2004 (though 5th runner Karen Delay was), so the prospects for an even more impressive performance in 2005 seemed imminent. Only Ferguson and Davidson would end up running for the Blue Streaks in Portland the next year, but they put in very strong runs for the 2005 team. And as is oft told about the 2004 team, Saratoga had the top four qualify for the Foot Locker championship that year at a time when a double for the two national championships was still possible for NY runners. The Fayetteville-Manlius 2010 team came up just short in the virtual meet, and its core of Kristy Rutledge, Katie Sischo, Jillian Fanning, Heather Martin, and Courtney Chapman achieved something very few teams do at NXN Nationals, run to a higher speed rating than their projected mark. Of the 460 teams that have run at NXN, less than a dozen have bettered their speed ratings at the meet, and most teams fall anywhere from 3 to 20 points below the expected. The FM 2010 team was one of five Hornet teams to overachieve, though ironically it is the FM 2006 team that finished last here that had the biggest boost over projections, by 3 points. In 2010, FM had a squad with three runners in Rutledge, Fanning, and Sischo who ran at around the 150 level plus a former frontrunner in Chapman who two years before as a sophomore had lived up there, and the Hornets also had a deep team with Katie Brislin in the sixth spot to overcome any personal setback. Not all the top teams are from way in the past, and the 2015 FM team certainly stacks up very well, and it too was one of the teams that ran above its level at Nationals. The difference in the 1 point that pushed it back to 4th behind the FM 2009 squad was the bigger 1-5 split, though a 16 point split for the 2015 team is better than average. The FM 2009 team, however, had a tiny 5 point split, which has only ever been bettered by the minuscule 3 point split for the 2014 FM team that saw Olivia Ryan, Annika Avery, Sophia Ryan, and Jenna Farrell finish within four seconds of each other and Samatha Levy just a little further back. |
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