Following Week of Saturday, December 2
Fayetteville-Manlius
was 2 points behind Corning at States, but it captured the other four decisions between the two Class A powers and finished it off with a fantastic 2nd at NXN Nationals. Corning had the best average time at muddy States by a hair over Class B champ Burnt Hills and pushed on to finish 12th at Nationals. Burnt Hills was the top team in the state for most of the year and captured the Federation title, but the Spartans couldn't come up with quite enough change for a ticket to Portland. Mount Academy and Beaver River won their third and sixteenth state championships respectively while taking the crowns in Class C and Class D, Xavier won a second straight title in the CHSAA, Trinity won a second straight in the AIS, and Susan Wagner won the PSAL.
Both the mud and heat in early November had a big impact on the rankings, as a lot of teams seemed to get swallowed up in the ooze of the Section 5 and States contests at Wayne HS or wilt in the stew pot of the Section 11 meet at Sunken Meadows. At the end of it all, we have 155 teams in the final
rankings in the A-B-C-D classes, and the order for the top 10 at least seems to be pretty clear in most of the classes.
These
final rankings are based largely on the final meet(s) of importance for
each team, which could be Sectionals, League (CHSAA-PSAL-AIS)
championship, States, Federation, NXN-NY, or NXN, though the NXN-NY is
just in play for at most five teams that are competing all out for
tickets to Portland. Teams are also evaluated on their season's work,
but if you had a tough day at Sectionals or the CHSAA championship,
the final results limit your chances for a good ranking. A team generally does not get moved ahead of its Sectional or League
champ, so every team should hope that its local representative does very
well at States or Federations so that its own value is not pulled
downward.
Note that the final team speed ratings and lineup include runners who were contributors at any point of the season but may have been missing from November meets. Each team's speed ratings followed by the compression spread number in parentheses is shown at right preceding the roster list of the runners' last names.