Three of the eight remaining former CIF-State Cross Country girls champions are (l-r) Haley Herberg, Claudia Lane and Fiona O'Keeffe. (Photos: Pat Rhames, Ben Crawfod, Spencer Allen)
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OUR LATEST GREATEST POLL TOURNAMENT HEADS TO THE QUARTERFINALS
The objective is for you to determine the Greatest CIF-State Cross Country Champion. Over the past two weeks, your votes have pared the original field of 32 former CIF-State girls XC champions down to an elite eight.
In the first round, half of the higher-seeded former champions were eliminated. Seeds 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 and 16 were voted out.
In the Round of 16, four-time champion Sarah Baxter was a runaway winner over 1987-88 champion Kira Jorgensen; two-time winner Fiona O'Keeffe was a narrow winner over 2017 Division I champion Corie Smith; three-time winner Julia Stamps was a 23-vote winner over 2001 champion Amber Trotter; Haley Herberg, the D-II champion in 2017, advanced over two-time winner Christine Babcock; four-time champion Jordan Hasay was a runaway winner over 2013 winner Anna Maxwell; 2015 D-I champion Destiny Collins advanced past another 2015 winner, Cate Ratliff; two-time champion Claudia Lane, our largest vote-getter to this point, was unchallenged by 2019 D-I star Carlie Dorostkar, and four-time champion Sara Bei-Hall eliminated 2013 winner Bethan Knights.
Your votes determine which of these remaining eight lades will advance to the Final Four. Voting opens today (9/3) at noon and closes Sept. 9 at 6 p.m. Who ya got?
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Skip Ahead: Bios | Voting
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Background
The CIF-State Cross Country Championships were held for the first time in 1987 with three divisions. Division IV was first contested at the State Meet in 1990 and DV was added for the 1996 championships.
The meet always has been held on the 5,000-meter course at Woodward Park in Fresno.
Criteria
In the history of the CIF-State XC Championships, only six girls have run the course to win a title in less than 17 minutes. Those six girls combined to run sub-17 to victory 11 times. Two of those girls, plus nine others, have won CIF-State XC titles in fast times between 17 minutes and 17:10. One of those plus 11 others have winning times between 17:11 and 17:19.
We also have three girls that have won division titles all four years and another five girls who have won the state title three times.
Anyone with three or more multiple titles and/or winning times of sub-17:20 automatically was included among the original 32 girls in this tournament.
We identified 29 girls who met that criteria. The final three were selected from a pool of 14 two-time champions who did not meet the criteria. They were added based on their combined winning times.
The Final 32
Athlete bios for those who you voted into this round of competition are listed below. We originally ranked all 32 athletes in tiers of four and listed them alphabetically within each tier for bracketing purposes.
For example, an athlete in Tier 1 with a last name beginning with the letter A would then be bracketed against the athlete in Tier 8 with a last name beginning with the letter Z.
The tiers are no longer applicable once bracketing was completed. To read bios of eliminated athletes, click the "Greatest CIF-State XC Champion Poll" series link at the top of this article to see all articles in this series.
Voting
Find voting on the third page. Each round will last at least five days. Please encourage friends and teammates, current and past, to support your favorite champion.