Wednesday, September 22, 2010

CCS and California girls' pre-season rankings...

Courtesy of www.lynbrooksports.com
2010 CCS Team Rankings and Individual Comparisons
SJ Mercury News Team Rankings - 09/22

Rank BOYS Div Previous Rank 
1 Bellarmine D1 1
2 San Benito D1 2
3 Los Altos D2 3
4 Menlo-Atherton D1 5
5 Willow Glen D3 4
6 San Lorenzo Valley D4 6
7 Salinas D1 7
8 Carlmont D1 9
9 Monta Vista D1 8
10 Mountain View D2 11
11 RL Stevenson D4 NR
12 Serra D1 10
13 Cupertino D2 12
14 Woodside D2 13
15 Los Gatos D2 14

GIRLS 
1 Gunn D1 3
2 Carlmont D1 1
3 Mountain View D2 2
4 Los Gatos D2 4
5 San Lorenzo Valley D4 6
6 St. Ignatius D3 5
7 Presentation D2 7
8 Mitty D2 8 9 St. Francis D2 9
10 Valley Christian-SJ D3 10
11 Aptos D3 13
12 San Benito D1 12
13 Half Moon Bay D4 11
14 Sacred Heart Cathedral D3 14
15 Aragon D2 NR

And courtesy of ESPN Rise, here are the NorCal girls' teams ranked in the top 103 in CA.  Keep in mind that the following rankings were done during the pre-season.

16)  Campolindo HS (NCS)
27)  Granite Bay HS (SJS)
30)  Oak Ridge HS (SJS)
33)  Del Oro HS (SJS)
46)  Carlmont HS (CCS)
52)  Vista Del Lago (SJS)
53)  Acalanes HS (NCS)
57)  Mountain View HS (CCS)
67)  St. Francis-Sacramento (SJS)
71)  Woodcreek HS (SJS)
74)  Bishop O'Dowd HS (NCS)
78)  St. Ignatius HS (CCS)
80)  Los Gatos HS (CCS)
82)  San Ramon Valley HS (NCS)
85)  Carondelet HS (NCS)
86)  Monte Vista HS (NCS)
90)  Chico HS (NS)
97)  Dougherty Valley HS (NCS)
98)  Valley Christian SJ (CCS)
100)  Vacaville HS (SJS)
101)  Maria Carrillo HS (NCS)
102)  Petaluma HS (NCS)

Feel free to comment on the above rankings.  Obviously Granada HS should be up there.  Who else?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really? Who is voting Gunn #1 when they dodge the top CCS teams? I have seen no times or results to say they deserve to be #1. Are they even going to Stanford?

Albert Caruana said...

Results for Gunn at RL Stevenson Relays:
http://www.dyestatcal.com/ATHLETICS/XC/2010/rls_rel.htm

They will not be competing at the Stanford Invitational this year.

As far as rankings, while it's nice to be ranked #1 at this point in the season, the most important races are in November.

MV Moose said...

Gunn girls were about a dozen seconds faster at Stevenson this year than last year. Since they ended, what, 4 points behind MV at CCS last year, a linear extrapolation indicates they are #1 this year! Gunn also showed a froshie in their top five.
I didn't see any results this weekend that showed a strong reason to change my ratings from last week. I'll update after Stanford.

Anonymous said...

As you know, the improvement of the number one runner can really carry a team when the results are "team time." And I think you will agree that Robinson is on a whole other level this year, as evidenced in her 18 min 5k at the LG All-Comer in August. But that is maybe a one point difference from last year...

Gunn losing two amazing runners is what I question. The depth of the 4 and 5 is what will determine how they finish over-all. Like Aptos, how good is the number 5 runner? If you have a 23-24 minute runner at the end of the year for #5 you still might make state with a super studly top 4 but you will NOT be ranked in the top 15 at the end of the day when you add in every runner from every division.

It is hard for me to understand why Gunn, one of the best teams in the CCS (#1 in your book) would choose not to run a meet in their own back yard. While they are a good team, I can't help to think that if they were more battle tested they might have been the #1 team last year. And the big meet experience might have helped them at State where they bombed...

Ernie Lee said...

Slight correction, we are running two athletes at Stanford this year and Paul Summers ran at Stanford last year.

In general, we have not raced at Stanford because of the limited entries (even when there was a JV division they only allowed 7 runners and the race was a 3K). In the past, we've gone to the Ram Invitational because of this reason. Last year, we were in Chicago for a meet. This year, we were planning on running the Scott Bauhs Invitational, but unfortunately they had to move the date of the meet. Now, most of the Gunn runners will be doing a local road race instead.

I completely agree that we did not have a very good performance at the State Meet last season and there were certainly many reasons for that (some that have been pointed out before but others that are known only to our team). If you look at the results from our league finals, however, it becomes more apparent that the girls performance at CCS was the anomaly (albeit a positive one), not what occurred at the State Meet. Is it better to have one great race and not be able to match it, or not to have that great race at all?

I have no apologies for setting up our racing schedule the way we do. The philosophy of the program is to create a positive experience for every member of the team and to give them all the opportunity to achieve their goals, whatever they may be. I'd be shocked if more than two or three of the girls on the team even knows what they are ranked, let alone cares about it.

-ernie lee.
Gunn Cross Country

MV Moose said...

Anonymous: Great Post. Please use a fictional name next time, so we can keep track. As an example of your team time versus team points proposal, look at this years girl's Earlybird. Mountain View was first based on points with SLV third! It was the epic Hinds/Peterson race that boosted Carlmont and SI in the team time calculations.
Scheduling is not easy. I "tried my hand" at what I thought would be the best CCS schedule, and it is NOT easy. There are numerous trade-offs, including personal and team preferences.
I consider Stanford a no-brainer for any team that thinks it might be in the top 15 in CCS. Clovis is important if you think you'll be running there in late November (in my HS days, we always drove 200 miles to run the mid-season invitational on the state course). A race at Crystal and a race at Toro each year seems vital, too.
... just opinions from a fan of the sport....

MV Moose said...

Ernie:
Another great post. Thanks! I prepared mine before reading yours, but you much better captured the "personal and team preference" I referenced.
Best of luck to your teams.

Albert Caruana said...

Thank you for the above contributions "anonymous", Ernie and Moose.

While rankings are great and some people do get excited over them, they are merely somebody's opinion on how teams stack up at a certain point in the season. Some rankers do rank teams based on where they think they will end up at the end of the season.

Scheduling is a different issue that teams tackle differently. As with training, there is no one perfect way to schedule your season. Some teams race a lot, some race every other week, some go to tough invitationals etc. As a coach, you have the ability to schedule the meets that work for your team.

Again, thank you all for chiming in and keeping it civil. Feel free to ask any questions you may have which may be answered by other visitors to this site.

Anonymous said...

may we ask why willow glen is ranked lower than a team they beat head to head saturday? If rankings are going to be valid at all head to head meets must be taken as top priority. No?

Albert Caruana said...

If you are talking about the CCS rankings, those are voted on by several coaches, collected by Hank Lawson and posted on his site and the SJ Mercury News. Feel free to send in your ballots to Hank at his email address which is posted at www.lynbrooksports.com.

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