With 5 returners back from their 8th-place finish in Division 2, the Wildcats look like a team on the rise.
Cross country is right around the corner, and we're celebrating by counting down to the start of the competitive fall season! Each day (except today!) we'll release one boys team and one girls team, counting down from 30 to 1 as we approach the beginning of real XC racing.
Take the team that finished 8th in Division 2 and remove only 2 seniors from that group, leaving impressive returning times. Add significant year-to-year improvement, as indicated by the 5th-best Improvement Rating in the state over the last 3 years. Factor in a budding star in Jack Arnold, one of the top 25 returning individuals in the state. Finish with a heavy dose of leadership from at least 4 rising seniors in the projected top 7 for 2016. That's the formula West Ranch hopes to use to move into the top 5 in D2 this fall, and it looks like a good plan! The only hesitation I have is mediocre team track results, which don't really allow us to project how much improvement the team may make (although Preston Pope had a strong spring). Despite that, the Wildcats appear to be a team on the rise, and could easily wind up in the top 20 by the end of the season.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 16th
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 31st
- Improvement Rating: 5th
The #CountdownToXC is a data-driven set of team rankings determined using the following information:
- Returning Team 5K & 3 Mile Rankings from 2015 XC: carries the most weight
- Returning Team 1600 and 3200 Rankings from 2015 Outdoor: less weight, but important
- Improvement Rating: a long-term statistical evaluation of how each program improves from season to season. This custom metric compares a team's final team average from each season to their returning team average from the previous season, while also accounting for how highly-ranked the team was. As we continue to improve the depth and quality of our data in California, this measure should get stronger and stronger. Improvement ratings will be the subject of a separate article in August.
- Returning team from the 2015 CIF state meet
- A little bit of "gut feeling"