Vote: Most Iconic Courses in California (Round 1)



The middle of the summer is usually a quiet time for high school track and cross country, and this year takes that to a new extreme. Despite all the uncertainty, we're still thinking about the upcoming cross country season, and we bet a lot of you are, too! We thought it would be fun to see what people think about the most "iconic" courses in their area and across the state, and we're setting up a poll tournament to find out.

The Rules:

  • "Iconic" can mean anything you want it to mean: deep history, super fast, extra challenging, gorgeous views, lots of high-stakes races for local bragging rights, whatever seems important to you.
  • We've divided the state into 4 broad geographical regions, which you can find on the following pages. Each region gets its own 8-course bracket. We want people to vote for courses on which they've had a chance to run, not guess at courses that are all the way across the state from them
  • Each region has a clear-cut top seed, and we've given those byes through the first two rounds. The regional brackets will have the #2 - #9 courses in our list.
  • After the first two rounds, we will take the top 2 courses from each region, the reserved top seeds, and four wild card courses (based on votes). We will then re-seed the tournament for a state-wide quarterfinals and beyond.

NOTE: we know there are almost certainly some "local legend" courses that didn't make this tournament. We consulted with our contributors from each major area, researched the meets held at the courses, and settled on what we think are the top 8 in each of the broad regions. We considered national-caliber invitationals, section finals, major state-level invitationals, and lots of local league meets as factors in determining which courses made the lists. If you think we missed a key course, hit us up on social media and let us know!


Vote on the following pages!

(voting is open through Thursday 7/9 at midnight)