The 2015 CCS champs have almost everyone back for 2016, and they want to improve on their 10th-place finish in Division 1.
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.
Team #29 in the countdown is Monte Vista, the defending CCS Division 1 champion. The Mustangs look like the clear favorite to repeat that result, as they only had one senior in the top 7 in 2015. That will change drastically this fall, though, with five rising seniors on the 2016 squad who would love to exit with a top 5 finish at the CIF state meet. Unfortunately, it's looking like a down year overall for the NCS boys, as Monte Vista is the only team from that section to make the top 35 of the state-wide 5K rankings; that could hurt when they have to make the jump from section final to state championship. The Mustangs also had solid but not spectacular results on the track, which makes it more difficult to predict their individual improvement (although Daniel Maneloveg looks like he has taken a big step forward). With a strong summer and a season of good competition at large, multi-section invitationals, though, Monte Vista could very well exceed this prediction.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 18th (5K)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 39th (Team 1600)
- Improvement Rating: 30th
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"