PORTLAND 12/03/04 -- No longer fairly able to be compared to the best high school teams in history, Saratoga Springs High School's cross-country team must now be measured against the collegiate powerhouses to truly understand its excellence.

While few elite athletes ever attain their "15 minutes of fame", Saratoga Springs is much too good -- needing only 14 minutes and 39 seconds to achieve it.

And while 99 percent of the high schools in America never have an athlete qualify for FootLocker Nationals, Saratoga Springs produced qualifiers not once, not twice (!), not three times (!!), but an amazingly unprecedented four times ON A SINGLE DAY while taking to New York's famed Van Cortland Park for the Northeast Regionals competition a week ago.

The greatest ever? Without a doubt.

Already tabbed by experts as surely the greatest collection of team talent on a single roster even before the 2004 cross-country season ever took to the trails, it did not take long for the crew to go out and prove it.

On the first weekend in October, the famed Blue Streak wheeled across the sloping terrain at North Carolina's SAS Park to compeletely overwhelm the top-rate competition en route to an unheard of 7-minute-and-20-second team time triumph over national power Bethlehem of New York in winning top honors at the 6th Annual Great American Cross-Country Festival. The showing became the greatest single-day effort in the history of this sport's performance annals, with Saratoga Springs averaging just 18:03 per scoring runner on the 5k layout in scoring a miniscule 26 points while competing against a talented 22-team field!

By contrast, it was at the inaugural Great American Cross-Country Festival event in 1999 that Bingham HS of Utah established the previous greatest single-day showing, with its 18:13 average on the comparably faster McAlpine Park 5k course layout utilized that year not quite stacking up here.

While spectators gawked at the eye-socket popping results from that day, the Saratoga Springs husband-and-wife coaching team of Art and Linda Kranick quietly declared later that day: "There were several things we could have done better in the race... This is not indicative of how good we can be."

They were not kidding.

Competing one week later in the featured Eastern States Championship section at the tradition-rich Manhattan Invitational, Saratoga Springs torched the famed 2.5-mile layout at venerable Van Cortlandt Park in historic fashion, with frontrunning ace Nicole Blood becoming the first girl ever to crack the 14-minute barrier on the course (13:57) while the scoring quintet amassed a stunning 14:39 average to annihilate the all-time standard on the course. Despite Blood's amazing individual performance, the rest of the crew chased vigorously, posting an impressive 1:02 scoring gap in widening the gap on the competition, evidenced by its 100-point victory over regional megapower Bay Shore at the meet.

Obviously not satisfied with its ledger of dominance just yet, the records romp continued at Van Cortlandt Park just weeks later.

Saratoga Springs returned to Manhattan to participate as unattached competitors at the FootLocker Northeast Regionals in the final weekend of November, destroying the arguments of any remaining skeptics in an aming display of front-end dominance never before encountered on the national landscape! With several of the America's finest assembled to determine berths to FootLocker Nationals, the fabled unit zipped across the 5-kilometer version of the Van Cortlandt Park layout with a determined mission -- stuff the finish chute with as many tickets to San Diego's nationals as possible.

Mission accomplished.

Winner Nicole Blood, third-placer Hannah Davidson, fifth-placer Lindsay Ferguson and sixth-placer Caitlin Lane crashed the qualifying party, becoming the first single-school "Fab Four" in FootLocker qualifying history! Twice before had a boys team qualified three to nationals, but never an amazing four for either gender!

If you need more proof whether they are the best team ever, you are crazy.

But just in case, the famed Saratoga Springs express will be steaming into Portland Meadows race track this weekend, competing as Kinetic Racing Club at the inaugural Nike Team Nationals. Stay tuned.