Sunday, December 06, 2015

Congratulations to Davis Sr girls for their 2nd place finish at NXN

Davis girls had one of the all-time greatest cross country seasons for a girls' team in Northern California. They won their section meet without their #1 runner Fiona O'Keeffe and then finished 2nd at the California state meet in Division I just 2 points behind nationally ranked Great Oak. Just for perspective, here are the NorCal teams that have finished in the top 5 at the California State Meet in Division I since the first state meet in 1987. As you can see, the 3 SJS teams and Monte Vista have really performed well at the state meet recently but what the Davis girls did during this post season is truly remarkable. Note that from 1987 to 2010, the only NorCal team to break into the top 5 in girls Division I was Lowell.

Lowell (SF) 1999 5th place 98:52
St. Francis, Sacramento (SJS) 2011 4th place 95:21
St. Francis, Sacramento (SJS) 2012 2nd place 92:42
Davis (SJS) 2012 5th place 94:14
Davis (SJS) 2013 2nd place 91:02
Bella Vista (SJS) 2014 2nd place 93:50
St. Francis, Sacramento (SJS) 2014 3rd place 95:19
Davis (SJS) 2015 2nd place 89:31
Monte Vista (NCS) 5th place 93:09

They finished in 2nd place at NXN with O'Keeffe as their 4th runner. Last year, she was 4th overall in the race. A healthy O'Keeffe would have had them a lot closer to Fayetteville Manlius although beating Manlius at NXN has proven to be an incredibly tough task. 9 national championships in the last 10 years is really hard to comprehend especially since they are a program with small numbers.

Here is my interview with coach Bill Gregg in October 5th 2007 if you are interested in learning a little more about the Davis program. I will post a follow up interview in the near future.

http://www.crosscountryexpress.com/2007/10/catching-up-with-davis-coach-bill-gregg.html

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! Well deserved. Davis is a class act.

Bill said...

I still think with that the depth of California results demonstrated at NXN, that Madera South and Saugus should have gone as at-large berths. Maybe the committee will see the depth of California and make additional spots available based on a formula of how regions do the previous year(s)... No system is perfect but the CA state meet has used this system for quite a while.

Anonymous said...

What at large teams do you take out if you put in Saugus and Madera South?

Anonymous said...

The ONLY teams Jesuit lost to this year were Great Oak (fastest team in state history) and Dana Hills (4th fastest team ever at Woodward). They did not lose to Madera South or Saugus, but no love for NorCal. Since it seems like a secret society makes decisions on NXN, it's hard to know the criteria, but it's clear that rankings have a disproportionate influence on decisions. The Southern California, self proclaimed King of Cross Country, historically underrates NorCal teams and overrates SoCal (Southern Section in particular) teams. The net impact of this is national rankings done by web sites that have no presence in California basing their rankings on Rich Gonazalez' biased rankings. And to be clear, this isn't just my opinion, many coaches and those that follow HS XC in California have expressed similar views. There has to be some effort to have some consistency across the sections, the state and the nation. At NXN, Fayetville-Manlius ran with an 8th grader who doesn't even attend the school, because middle schoolers are allowed in NY (and EVERY other state that has won the girl's side of NXN). At Foot Locker a 19 year old sophomore won the girl's race. In California McFarland was forced by their section to run in D1 at state against teams with 3 and even 4 times bigger enrollment.

Anonymous said...

I would be interested in a follow up interview. Teams like that dont come around often. Especially teams that can do so well with one of the top runners in the nation hurt.

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