The Apaches will no longer have the lowest stick in every race, but their depth and tight pack still makes them a tough team to beat.
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.
The Arcadia boys program is too good to fall far in the rankings, even with the loss of one of California's greatest runners ever. Interestingly, their best ranking is at 5K instead of the Southern Section's standard distance of 3 Miles, which might be an indication that the Apaches prefer to compete on tough courses and avoid some of the speedways in the area. Experience is their biggest weakness, as their 2015 postseason squad had 5 seniors on it. On the other hand, depth will not be a problem - the returning top 7 has a total split of 36 seconds, and the team put 22 guys under 5 minutes in the spring. Speaking of track season, watch out for returning #4 runner Anthony Segura, who clocked 4:25 and 9:45. Arcadia will be a totally different type of team in 2016 without a dominating front-runner, but this is a team that's capable of reloading instead of rebuilding.
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 10th (3 Miles)
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 33rd (27th 3200, 38th 1600)
- Improvement Rating: 6th
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"