Following Week of Saturday, September 30
The
rankings for Week 3 were heavily influenced by the wild and
free-swinging action at the big McQuaid meet in Rochester. Teams had
their pick of seven different varsity races, three huge JV (Varsity B)
events with up to 560 runners, plus a sophomore race that host school
McQuaid put some big resources into. So unless you were Class B
powerhouse Burnt Hills claiming the huge AAA race among the big schools,
you couldn't really say you were the king of your class because you had
been victors in any particular race. Some big schools like Xavier ran
in the mid-day medium-sized school AA race for travel reasons, some
highly ranked schools were in one of the four unseeded races, and then
there were those BH Spartans in the big race pushing their season's
speed ratings over the 175 mark.
Though McQuaid did not lead to any changes at the number 1 position for any class, there were large amounts of shifting going on in the rankings lists as many teams saw their TRs zoom way up. Other big action at EJ Herrmann, John Killian, Maine-Endwell, and NYC Mayor's Cup in-state and the Six Flags Wild Safari and Paul Short out-of-state also made the rankings hop around a bit. As on the girls' side, teams that were not running last weekend risked falling back as excellent conditions on the weekend boosted the TRs of most of the teams that were in action. Merge results for McQuaid were used here to help get a handle on the scores from all the varsity races, but head-to-head in a race still is the first factor. A number of teams were running without key runners, which is understood and the season's work is important, but teams also got to go with what they got and be judged on what they laid down on the trail.
More changes are coming next weekend as the action spreads out to approximately seventeen meets in the state and region in the weekend before the huge Manhattan Invite.