TSR's 2023 Boy's High School XC Top-10 Team Rankings: Pre-NXN Update

Donald Speas
Nov 27, 2023
10 min read

Written by Donny Speas, edits & additional commentary via Garrett Zatlin

KEY

(Unranked):

Was not ranked in our last update.

(#/#):

First number indicates how much the team has moved in our rankings.

The second number indicates where the team was ranked in our last update.

1. American Fork Cavemen (UT) (0 / 1)

It’s business as usual for the top ranked team in the country.

Since our latest rankings update, the Cavemen have competed in two meets. One was a small tune-up meet amongst local competition in the Utah Valley area and truthfully, we're pretty much going to disregard all results from that. That race appeared to be not much more than a tempo for the Cavemen.

However, the other meet that the Caveman competed in was arguably the strongest meet in the country outside of the national meet: The NXR Southwest Championships.

At the NXR Southwest meet, American Fork dominated the competition, winning by 42 points over in-state rival and our TSR #2 team in the country, Herriman. They did all of what while averaging 15:16 for 5000 meters.

Danny Simmons was phenomenal as always, taking the individual title, while the team's secondary scorer, Ben Jaster, had a quietly great race. He produced a personal best of 15:15 which was good enough for 13th place in the field.

With Simmons as dominant as ever and Jaster rounding into top form, the core scoring quartet, which also includes Kaden Evans and Chase Pack, could be enough to simply overwhelm their competition. And if Ben Bradshaw rebounds from this latest outing, then it's going to be very hard to take down this team for NXN gold.

2. Herriman Mustangs (UT) (0 / 2)

I’ll admit it, Herriman’s most recent performance at NXR Southwest meet was not the most confidence inspiring. Yes, a 2nd place result wasn’t unexpected, but being 42 points back of rival American Fork wasn't ideal for a squad in contention to win gold. And perhaps more concerning, they were “only” 32 points ahead of a Riverton team that they beat by 107 points at the Utah XC State Championships earlier in the season.

But despite the underwhelming team score (which still wasn't all that bad), there were still a couple bright spots.

The return of William Steadman as a top scorer and a small PR by the Mustangs' third scorer, William Hofheins, were encouraging developments, especially as we head into the most important time of the year.

Additionally, Herriman also flexed an incredible nine-second spread between there top-five runners. That kind of top-five time spread leads me to believe that last weekend's performance may have been an intentionally conservative effort by Coach Doug Soles in order to rest his athletes for the grand finale this coming Saturday.

And if that's the case, then any concerns that I mentioned above are essentially null.

It's still pretty hard to rank Herriman given what what we just saw. However, we’ve elected to keep them at TSR #2 due to their caliber of work during the regular season, their impressive performance at the Utah XC State Championships and the fact that the Mustangs have been the only team that has given our TSR #1 team, American Fork, a challenge all season.

3. Southlake Carroll Dragons (TX) (+1 / 4)

Since our last rankings update, the Southlake Carroll boys have had two significant results. One was at the Texas UIL 6A XC State Championships and the other was atthe NXR South Championships, both of which they won.

Despite walking away victorious by 21 points over Austin Vandegrift at the state meet, that result still felt a bit underwhelming relative to expectations. To put that race into context, the Dragons took down Austin Vandegrift by 99 points earlier in the season.

Then, just a week later at the NXR South Championships, Southlake Carroll completely flipped the script and dominated the meet, winning by 69 points and beating 3rd place Austin Vandegrift by 91 points.

Caden Leonard continues to be a true national-caliber star, Jude Alvarez is a top-tier secondary scorer and both Blake Bullard and Zach Troutman offer tremendous scoring stability. When you consider the sneaky-strong moments that both Griffin Cords and Alex Severson have had this fall, the floor of this team feels incredibly high.

The ability to soundly beat a team that had been somewhat competitive against them a week prior is the main reason why Southlake Carroll moves up a spot to TSR #3.

4. Belen Jesuit Wolverines (FL) (-1 / 3)

There's not too much to report on the Belen Jesuit boys. Since our latest rankings update, they have competed in two races, each of which they’ve won by triple digits.

The first meet was the FHSAA 3A State XC Championships, putting four athletes (Mantecon and the three Ruiz brothers) in the top-eight spots, winning the meet by 113 points. The second of the two meets was the NXR Southeast Championship where they were clearly the class of the field. Once again they won by a huge margin, this time by 127 points.

Oddly enough, you could say that the latter effort was a "down" race for the boys from Miami.

Senior Joesph Ruiz was the only one of the varsity seven to set a personal best at this meet. Meanwhile, freshman phenom Marcelo Mantecon was a good chunk slower than what we’ve come to expect from him. With some shakiness from their sixth and seventh runners, we felt like there was enough to drop the Wolverines one spot.

Belen Jesuit may be losing a bit of the momentum they had, but it would be foolish to count out the Wolverines. They were always going to be the dominant team in their region and the greater emphasis lies ahead. They still have a clear path to the podium, especially with one of the more dynamic top-four scoring contingents for Saturday's race.

5. Christian Brothers Academy Colts (NJ) (0 / 5)

For those of you who haven’t been paying much attention to the east coast cross country scene, New Jersey is perhaps the most underrated state in the country.

They have a very solid top-10 team in Westfield, a complete wildcard in Union Catholic (who can swing anywhere from TSR #8 to TSR #40, nationally) and at the head of the challenging state cross country scene, they have a consistently elite team in Christian Brothers Academy.

Although the Colts' 36-point win over Westfield at the NJSIAA Meet of Champions is certainly impressive, their win at the NJSIAA XC Group Championships certainly needs to be re-examined.

In the "Non-Public A race", Christian Brothers Academy scored a perfect 15 points, sweeping the top-five spots (and they had their sixth man, Brady Barber, cross the line in 7th place). That level of dominance is absolutely insane.

Christian Brothers breezed through the NXR Northeast meet, comfortably qualifying for the national meet. Last year, NXN didn't go favorably for Christian Brothers Academy. But with the way that the Connor Clifford and Joe Barrett have been running this fall, I would be shocked if this year wasn't a significantly better performance.

However, the bigger x-factor may be Jack Falkowski who was 9th this past weekend. If he keeps running like that, then CBA is going to a problem for their opponents on Saturday.

6. San Clemente Tritons (CA) (Unranked)

Ah, the chaos of California.

Isn’t it lovely?

The most recent team to stand atop the Golden State ranks are the San Clemente Tritons. San Clemente earns our TSR #6 spot in our rankings due to their victory at the CIF State XC Championships where they both won their division (by 64 points, nonetheless) and were the top team in the merged results, finishing ahead of Dana Hills (TSR #7) by 25 points.

San Clemente has definitely had a solid season up and to this point, finishing 5th at the Woodbridge XC Classic and 4th at the ASICS Clovis XC Invitational. We knew that senior Brett Ephraim was the real deal, but this most recent performance (finishing 9th in the overall combined results) was definitely a pleasant surprise.

When looking at how various members of the Tritons' lineup performed at different races throughout the season, all of them seemingly peaked at the perfect time. At the state meet, every one of the Triton’s varsity seven set a 5000-meter personal best.

Again, every. single. one. ran a personal best at the state meet! Taj Clarke (26th overall) and Pierce Clarke (33rd overall) have made subtly-great improvements which, as we just saw, were wildly impactful. And with Dallin Harrington as well as Kai Olsen closing out the scoring reasonably fast enough, I certainly don’t want to be picking against the San Clemente boys anytime soon.

7. Dana Hills Dolphins (CA) (0 / 7)

After a midseason resurgence and the addition of Jayden Hernandez, the Dana Hills boys have continued their winning ways after coming away victorious at the ASICS Clovis Invitational earlier in the season.

Since our latest rankings, update Dana Hills has thrived in nearly every race that they have competed in. That stretch was highlighted by a win over our TSR #6 team, San Clemente, at the South Coast League Finals. And after their win at the South Coast League Finals, the Dolphins cruised through both the prelims and the finals of the California Southern Section XC Championships, easily winning each.

Unfortunately, Dana Hills is a CIF Division Three school, meaning that we didn’t get to see the Dolphins face-off directly against any of California’s ranked squads at the state meet. Due to that, we’re left to go off of the state meet merge results where Dana Hills finished 15 points behind San Clemente to secure the second auto-qualifying spot for NXN.

Regardless, we are very high on San Clemente's prospects at the national meet, but it's a different ball game when the two California teams share the same start line. The Evan Noonan and Jayden Hernandez low-stick combination is lethal. However, it will be the scoring stability of Logan Harris, Oliver Hunter and Garrett Woodruff to bridge the two-halves of this lineup.

That said, I won't be surprised in the slightest if the Dana Hills Dolphins flip the script at NXN.

8. Coeur D’Alene Vikings (ID) (+1 / 9)

Coeur D'Alene's 2023 cross country season has been a testament to steady improvement, securing both an NXR Northwest title and an IHSAA 5A XC State Championship victory.

Nestled in the northern reaches of Idaho, the team has quietly climbed the ranks, solidifying their presence on the national scene. Despite some attributing their ascent to the underperformance of others, Coeur D'Alene has undeniably earned their place at the national meet through consistent solid performances.

This team's biggest weakness is that they don't have a true low-stick. The Vikings' most consistent top scoring option is junior Maximus Cervi-Skinner who was their first man across the line at both their state meet and the NXR Northwest meet.

However, the team also has a wild card in senior Lachlan May who, at his best, is the team's top athlete. In fact, he holds the fastest 5k PR on the team with a very impressive 15:00 mark which he achieved by winning at the 6th Annual Battle for the Border back in September.

If both Cervi-Skinner and May can be on their "A" game at the same time as Jacob King, then perhaps it's time we start thinking about a potential top-five finish for Couer D'Alene given their strong supporting cast to bolster their underrated scoring trio.

9. Downers Grove North Trojans (IL) (Unranked)

Take a guess what happens when a team's entire top-seven sets a 5k personal best at NXR? If you guessed that they’d win the NXR title, then you’d be correct!

Downers Grove North did exactly that at NXR Midwest Championships, winning the meet by 51 points. But what makes this win so much more impressive is that they managed to do it without a single runner inside the top-30! That’s not something that you see every day.

Additionally, they also held a top-five time spread of merely 21 seconds! That kind of compact running from a regional-winning team could lead to major success in a much larger and more competitive field like the NXN Championships.

Although the Trojans have been flirting with our top-10 list throughout the season, spending time in our "Honorable Mentions" and "Just Missed" lists, they haven’t made it onto our rankings before this, so I thought I'd give a quick rundown of the Trojans season up to this point.

They started off the season strong, dominating the Chicagoland competition at the First to the Finish Invitational, beating two eventual-NXN qualifying teams in the process. They continued on, not struggling against the competition, staying inside state lines. In their final meet before NXN, they won the IHSA 3A state title. Led by sophomore Philip Cupial, they used their impressive team spread to dominate, once again flexing a 21-second time-spread between their top-five athletes.

Downers Grove North is on the upswing. They’ve proven that they can handle the best teams in the midwest and have had an impressive time spread while doing so. They may not have a national-caliber superstar, but Cupial is very solid and when racing next to Ryan Eddington, this team does have some legitimate scoring potency and firepower.

With Zachary Bender, Grant Schroder and Caden Weber shutting down the team scoring incredibly well, this team, structurally, should fare well on the national stage.

10. Westfield Blue Devils (NJ) (Unranked)

I loved seeing the Westfield Blue Devils produce a 2nd place result at NXR Northeast Championships and I loved that they clearly separated themselves as the second-best team in the Northeast region.

The Blue Devils had numerous strong performances against strong in-state competition this fall highlighted by the New Balance Shore Coaches Invitational in September where they very nearly upset Christian Brothers Academy (TSR #5). Due to that performance, we very nearly put Westfield in the most recent edition of our rankings (to the point where we had a rough draft written out.)

During the New Jersey postseason, Westfield took the NJSIAA Group 4 XC Championships, winning by 50 points over a very good Ridgewood team. That was followed by a runner-up finish at the NJSIAA Meet of Champions, losing to the aforementioned boys of Christian Brothers Academy.

But this past weekend, at NXR Northeast meet, Westfield ran a phenomenal race to finish in 2nd place, securing a bid to the national meet. And perhaps most importantly is how close they were to our TSR #4 team!

The Blue Devils were only 10 points away from Christian Brothers Academy and that's with low-stick Tage Metha fading to 19th place in a race where he most certainly could have been among the top-five!

With Avery Keith as the other top-tier low-stick and a contingent featuring Jimmy Gildea, Ryan Daly and Alexander Valencia in the top-30 this past past weekend, this team could make way more noise than some people realize.

If everyone can fire on all cylinders when it matters most, then we may all be feeling stupid for having slept on the Westfield Blue Devils for as long as we did.