2023 Pre-Season Central Coast Section (CCS) Division V Boys and Girls Cross Country Rankings

Below are the last pre-season rankings for CCS, Division V. For the boys, the two best teams are Ccrystal Springs Uplands School and Menlo. It was a close battle all the way through the state meet last year and it looks like a toss-up once again this year. The Nueva School was the 3rd best team but they will be in rebuild mode this year. The same goes for the 4th place team, Monte Vista Christian, and the 5th place finishing team in 2022, The King's Academy is now back in Division IV. For the girls, the best four teams going into the season are Crystal Springs Uplands School, Castilleja, Menlo, and Nueva. Only three teams will qualify to the state meet this year after losing one spot since last season which means one of those teams will not be advancing to the state meet in 2023. 

The division breakdowns for all CCS teams can be found at this LINK. The number of teams that qualify for the state meet in each section and division can be found at this LINK.

Division V Boys (Top 3 Advance to state)
1) Crystal Springs-Section and State Champs in 2022. Now veteran group led by juniors Ben Bouie and Tarik Baker.
1) Menlo-2nd at the state meet last year with a strong group returning led by juniors Landon Pretre and Will Hauser.
3) The Nueva School-Impressive sophomore Ryan Fitzpatrick leads the way for rebuilding Nueva.
4) Monte Vista Christian-4th place last year. Lose individual state qualifier James Ponzio.
5) TBA

Top 5 returning individuals, (place) and 2022 CCS meet time:
Benjamin Bouie (2) Crystal Springs 15:23.7
Landon Pretre (3) Menlo 15:31.0
Tarik Baker (5) Cyrstal Springs 15:41.3
Oliver Boesch (10) Cyrstal Springs 16:28.1
Matthew Morris (12) Crystal Springs 16:38.5

Division V Girls (Top 3 Advance to state)

1) Crystal Springs-Defending Section and State Champs. Sophomores Anna Salter and Kira Dye lead the way.
2) The Nueva School-Return their entire top 7 from last year's 3rd place team.
3) Castilleja-Senior Perry McElhinney leads the way for consistently one of the top teams in this division.
4) Menlo-Veteran coach Jorge Chen will have a competitive team by section time led by soph Ariya Kaushek.
5) Santa Catalina-Provided they can field a full team, Santa Catalina seems to be the 5th best team in this division.
On the bubble (alphabetical order): Oceana, St. Thomas More, 

Top 5 returning individuals, (place) and 2022 CCS meet time:
Lara Scanziani-Grij (2) Oceana 18:38.8
Perry McElhinney (3) Castilleja  19:01.7
Kira Dye (6) Crystal Springs 19:31.4
Ariya Kaushek (7) Menlo 19:51.1
Ariane Yedidia (8) The Nueva School 20:01.6

Please feel free to chime in on the rankings above. I won't be offended if you strongly disagree as the above rankings are meant to be a launching pad for conversation. Fortunately, section titles and state meet berths are decided by the runners themselves. Any impact freshmen that we should know about?