We know Steven Khan is already a beast and likely to get even better, but can the Bulldogs build a state meet team around him?
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.
When you're trying to build a team that can go to the state meet in November, it helps to start with a defending individual champion. Ayala has that in Steven Khan, who will be looking to step into the vacuum created by the graduation of the state's "big 3" boys runners from last fall. It's also good if you have 5 returners that broke 16 for 3 Miles last fall, and it's even better if your program has shown consistent year-to-year improvement over the last 3-5 years. The Bulldogs have all that going for them, and the only negative I can find is that their spring track results as a team weren't as good as their returning XC results, making it hard to gauge improvement. Experience is also a concern, as Ayala failed to advance out of the Southern Section prelims last year. The grind to the state meet is tough, and the Bulldogs have to break through TWO barriers to get there, but with enough young talent returning it can be accomplished.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 17th (3 Miles)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 34th (30th 3200, 47th 1600)
- Improvement Rating: 16th
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"