Up for Consideration: the Great Oak Wolfpack
- CIF State Titles: 11 (7 girls, 4 boys) - All in Division 1
- Podium Finishes: 12 (8 girls, 4 boys)
- Longest streak: 6 girls' titles (active)
- Swept boys and girls D1 titles for four consecutive years
Two things really stand out in favor of Great Oak's ascendancy over the last decade. First, all of their titles are in Division 1, against the strongest teams in the state with the largest talent pools (and during a time period when California has been very strong overall). As you will see on the next page, no other school has had this level of sustained success in the largest schools division. Second, they have won in both genders, which is incredibly hard to do. When you consider that the school only opened in 2004, which means it didn't even exist during the time that many of the programs on the next page were winning titles, Great Oak's success is truly remarkable (11 titles in 14 years!).
The Wolfpack has an unprecedented "sweep streak" going, having won both the boys' and girls' titles for four consecutive years. Interestingly, this is part of an overall trend in California: since 2011, there have been 5 schools that have swept both genders in a single year. In the previous 19 years since the first state meet in 1987, four schools accomplished the same feat. Nordhoff is the only other program to have more than one single-season sweep - the Rangers did it three times. (That also means coach Ken Reeves, who was with Nordhoff during their peak and now coaches at Foothill Tech, has 4 sweeps on his resume, the same number as Great Oak coach Doug Soles.) Overall, 9 schools in California history have won both genders in the same year, and those programs have done that a total of 14 times - with Great Oak accounting for 4 of those (that's 29% of all team sweeps that have ever happened in this state).
One final note: Great Oak's legacy is far from complete. Their girls return 6 of 7 from this year's championship squad, so they will be favored to match Saugus' state-record title streak next fall. The Wolfpack boys are not the top returning team in our rankings, so their repeat will be a significant challenge - but would anybody seriously count them out? Is it fair to consider the future possibilities of a team while still in the midst of their peak years, before we know how the story ends? (We will ask that question about an individual athlete next week, as well.) I will leave the answer to that question, and all the others that I've asked here, to you for now.