The Matadors had an astounding five freshmen on their 2015 CIF state meet squad, which means they have huge potential for the next three years.
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 battle for best girls team in the North Coast Section should be intense! With Monte Vista at #18 and Granada in a virtual tie at #17, it's too hard to pick a true favorite coming into the season. Both teams lost their big gun front-runner, and both return solid young talent. For their part, the Matadors have slightly better returning times from last fall and from the spring, although they are a little behind in our Improvement Rating metric. Granada actually lost their top 2 from the team that finished 6th in Division 2, but it's what they have coming back that is remarkable: the Matadors had 5 freshmen on their 2015 state meet squad! That gives this team a three-year window to continue to build their depth and pursue a top 5 finish in Clovis. Two of those rising sophomores (Colleen McCandless and Gracie Dupuis) ran under 5:10 on the track, and McCandless also broke 11 minutes. This is a Granada team with enormous potential, and I can't wait to see how it develops!
Ranking Data:
- Returning Team Ranking: 16th
- Combined Spring Track Ranking: 12th
- Improvement Rating: 41st
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"