Can the Dons close the gap on their nemesis in the SDS? They have a better returning top 5, but it should be a close (and interesting) team battle.
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.
Cathedral Catholic finished 6th in Division 3 last fall, and they return 5 runners from that team. You can see that reflected clearly in their returning times below - after the 5th runner the numbers fall off dramatically. That's mostly because the girls run 2.7 miles in the San Diego Section, which means many of the depth runners from 2015 don't have great 5K times. The Dons always seem to be in the thick of things, both in the SDS and in D3 overall, so you can expect them to cultivate some depth over the summer. During spring track, Cami Doheny showed signs of becoming an individual contender with a sub-5:10 1600, although the team's overall results were not spectacular. Will Cathedral Catholic's edge in returning talent be enough to close the gap on defending SDS champ La Costa Canyon? In my opinion, that will be one of the more interesting questions when the season begins.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 14th (5K)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 26th (24th 3200, 28th 1600)
- Improvement Rating: 31st
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"