XC Pre-Season Team Musings by Herb Wills
by Herb Wills for DyeStat Florida
With Florida’s cross country season starting soon (but not soon enough), I’d like to look at the prospects of last year’s top teams. First, though, I’m going to make a disclaimer.
My high school cross country career was at Leon High from 1974 to 1977, during which time we were regularly pummeled by Largo, Choctawhatchee, and quite a few other Class 4A schools. My senior year Leon changed classification, so we go to lose to 3A schools instead. We never won a state title while I was there, but I learned that Leon had won the State Cross Country Meet in 1969, five years before I arrived.
The circumstances were unusual, though. Five distance runners moved into Tallahassee that fall. Leon had never competed in cross country before, but the track coach knew enough to realize that if you had that many talented distance runners, you could field a team. The coach also realized that he didn’t know much about training cross country runners, so he sent his charges down the street to Florida State University. A new assistant coach for the Seminoles, Dick Roberts, gave the boys training advice.
The Leon boys won State that fall. Then they all graduated. The school didn’t win another State title for 38 years.
Athletes can move into a school district. They can also move away. They can get sick, get injured, or decide not to train over the summer. So many things can happen with an individual, and if you multiply that by seven, you’ll have an idea of how many things can happen with a team. Add coaching changes to that total and it becomes clear just how much a team’s performance can change from one year to the next.
Prediction is a dangerous game. But while we’re waiting for the XC season to start, we might as well live dangerously.
In Class 4A girls, there’s a strong temptation to abandon my usual caution and pick Winter Park to repeat. There are many reasons to be tempted. None of the seven girls that Coach McWilliams ran at the State Finals last year has graduated. Among the returners is Winter Park’s ace, Rafaella Gibbons.
St Thomas Aquinas came within 14 points of the Wildcats last year, but Aquinas graduated three of its top seven runners. No other team came within a hundred points of either Winter Park or Aquinas, so it’s going to take a remarkable transformation for someone to challenge the Wildcats.
Lyman and Coral Reef finished just five points apart in the class 4A boys standings at the State Final last year, with Lyman taking the title. State champ Joshua Jacques is back for the Greyhounds, but Coral Reef returns State runner-up Carlin Berryhill. Each team graduated just two seniors, of which only one was a scorer. As interesting as the 2015 rematch between these two school will be, neither has the depth to be a certain contender again this year. Watch Lyman's Jacques and Armstrong, watch Coral Reef's Berryhill's, but watch for dark horses as well.
2014 State XC Finals by Bob Murphy/Justshootitphotography.com
Creekside was dominant in the class 3A girls State Final in 2014. Half a year later, Creekside graduated five of the seven girls on their state championship team. Runner-up Fort Myers only lost one runner to graduation, but that was their top finisher at State, Mallory Towe. Third place Vanguard lost state champion Elizabeth Mulford, and fourth place Sarasota graduated their ace, Angelina Grebe. If you go all the way down to fifth place in last year’s standings, though, Chiles is returning its entire top seven. The Girls Class 3A is going to be an interesting division to watch.
The Chiles girls may not have lost any runners to graduation, but that wasn’t the case with the boys’ team. Chiles won the Class 3A boys State Final, but after commencement exercises in the spring, only one member of that team was left. 2014 runner-up Leon isn’t in a position to take advantage of a Chiles rebuilding year; the Lions lost five runners to graduation, including two-time state champ Sukhi Khosla. In comparison, third-place Belen Jesuit looks good. It’s true that Belen Jesuit graduated two seniors, including ace Ryan Rodriguez, but this is a program that won seven state titles in the last nine years. The Wolverines may just be ready to start a new streak.
Expect Bolles and Pine Crest to be at the top of the Class 2A girls standings again. At last year’s State Final, they were over a hundred points better than the third-place, and each team only lost a single senior. The division should still be interesting, though, because only ten points separated champion Bolles from runner-up Pine Crest in 2014. With the addition of transfer Alyssa Pujals from Gulliver Prep, Pine Crest will be keenly looking to close the gap that existed in 2014.
The 2014 Class 2A boys' state champs from Trinity Prep should benefit from the return of two top-ten finishers, Trent Mandato, and Jesse Millson. The Saints lost one of their top five to graduation. Nevertheless, the 2014 runners-up, Pine Crest, will have had to have put in a great deal of work in the off-season if they’re going to challenge Trinity Prep in 2015. The speculation will end soon enough, though. The two teams are scheduled to be on the same course at the FLRunners Invitational on September 26, and again at Pre-State on October 3.
The Holy Trinity Academy girls won the Class 1A state title in 2014, the eighth in thirteen years. With only one senior on the team, the Tigers looked like a good bet to add championship number nine in 2015. Then Holy Trinity lost their coach, Doug Butler. Butler had been at the program’s helm for the last 15 years and all of the Tiger’s titles. Then three Holy Trinity runners transferred to a different school. The Tigers retain two top ten finishers from last year's State Final, Shelby Smith and Samantha Folio. But the 2014 runners up, Oak Hall, lost no runners to graduation. Oak Hall edged Holy Trinity for the state title in 2012 and would love to do it again in 2015.
The situation for the Holy Trinity boys is much the same as it is for the school’s girls team. The Tigers won the Class 1A title in 2014, scoring a dominating 33 points. The state runner-up, Andrew Cacciatore, graduated in the spring, but the rest of the varsity had been sophomores. Well, five sophomores and one frosh. Andrew Cacciatore would be missed, but there were potentially six returners, each who could be expected to get faster. However, five of those six have transferred, and Holy Trinity is looking at a rebuilding year. Of the teams that trailed the Tigers, second place Geneva graduated its top two runners, and third place Indian Rocks Christian graduated its top three. Fourth place Shorecrest Prep had no seniors on its State Final team, though, and neither did fifth place, Maclay. Both of those teams are worth watching, especially if Maclay gets expected strong performances from Frosh Clay Milford.
Soon enough it will be September, and the wildest speculation will be over. Some athletes will exceed expectations, others will fall short. An unregarded school may show up at the first meet of the season with three Kenyan exchange students. We’ll have plenty of fun and surprises before the State Final on November 7.
Northwest Florida Correspondent Herb Wills
Herb Wills' running career goes back to the 1971 boys' age-group mile at the Florida Relays. Since losing that race he has won the 1976 Florida High School class 4A cross-country championship, 1979 AAU USA junior titles in cross-country and the 10,000 meters, and the 1989 TAC USA 30K national championship. As a distance runner at Florida State University from 1978 to 1982, he was NCAA All-American three times in track and once in cross country, and won a silver medal in the marathon at the 1981 World University Games. Graduating Florida State with a degree in mathematics, in the following years Wills ran in the USA Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and placed tenth in the Boston Marathon in 1989. After more than a few years of duty as a hurdle setter and lane judge at track meets, Wills discovered that the public address announcer not only got to sit down at meets but was also sheltered from the rain. Since that revelation you can hear him with a microphone in his hand at several track and cross-country events in the Tallahassee area. Writing is another activity you can do while sitting down, and Wills has written about running for Racing South magazine and Tallahassee's local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.
You can read more running related tidbits in his blog at http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/
Herb Wills NorthWest Florida Reports 2015 ARTICLES / 2014 ARTICLES
