The Dons return five from their state meet team from 2015, but it was their spring season that really caught our eye.
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.
Using returning times from the fall alone, Cathedral Catholic would probably fall in the Honorable Mention category. It's what happened after the fall season that moves the Dons up the rankings: they had the 7th-best team 1600 results in California during outdoor track (and 12th-best in the team 3200). Add in some other factors in their favor, as well - they return 5 of 7 from the team that finished 7th in Division 3 in 2015, they have four rising seniors in their projected top 7 for this fall, and they are led by a legitimate individual title contender in Joaquin Martinez De Pinillos (4:14 & 9:16 this spring). The one vulnerability for Cathedral Catholic is depth - they have a huge gap between their returning 4th and 5th runners, which could be partly because the top 4 returners ran in Clovis, while the remainder posted their 5K times at Balboa Park. If the Dons can carry their spring momentum into the summer, this is definitely a team to watch in D3.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 24th (5K)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 10th (12th 3200, 7th 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"