The Thunderbirds return 5 from their 2015 squad, including a core of rising juniors, and they had some encouraging results on the track as well.
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.
Here's another team whose cross country numbers alone would put them a little lower in the rankings. Yucaipa lost their top two runners from the team that ran 8th in Division 1 last fall, but behind them was a team loaded with sophomores. The Thunderbirds had very good results in the 3200 this past spring, good enough toput hem 12th-best in the state overall. The returning front three of Mackenna Mason, Madison Parr, and Sarah Gee all looked good on the track, but behind them is a pretty sizeable gap. Yucaipa needs their returning 4-7 runners, who were clustered within 28 seconds of each other in 2015, to compete fiercely over the summer for spots in the upcoming top 5. Year-to-year improvement has been average for the Thunderbirds, so if they stepped it up over this past summer, a return trip to Clovis seems likely. Watch out for this team when their core are all seniors in 2017, too!
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 18th (3 Miles)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 21st (12th 3200, 29th 1600)
- Improvement Rating: 34th
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"