Unrealized potential in 2015 could turn into a team to watch in 2016, especially when you had 4 sophomores and a freshman in the top 7 last year.
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.
At first glance, this might seem like a peculiar choice. Chino Hills finished 13th in the Southern Section D1 prelims and did not advance as a team to the finals, let alone the state meet. On closer inspection, though, another story emerges: the Huskies were are very young team, with 4 sophomores and a freshman in their 2015 top 5, and they didn't race well on the big stage. That kind of experience can have 2 effects; either it will break a team's collective will, or it will light a fire under them. The potential is certainly there for Chino Hills, who posted the 9th-best overall team results at the loaded Woodbridge Invitational last September. This is the kind of sleeper team I like to spot, a team that did not reach full potential last year but has the returning talent to make the leap forward in 2016. Watch out for Rita Vogt, the Huskies' #4 in 2015 who ran 5:10 for the 1600 this past spring - that's the kind of jump that can bolster the entire team.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 16th (3 Mile)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 41st (41st 3200, 41st 1600)
- Improvement Rating: n/a
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"