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NXN Finals
12/6/08 - Portland Meadows, Portland OR

Boys Championship
Team Preview

Boys team battle can turn on all kinds of factors

Preview by Dave Devine, senior editor, DyeStat | ESPN RISE

Take out a map of the United States. 

Go ahead, it's time for a quick geography lesson.

See that long winding river that runs from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico?  The one that essentially splits the US in two?  No boys’ team from the left side of that river has ever won Nike Nationals.  (Heck, no girls’ team from outside New York has ever won that gender's championship race, but we’re talking about boys here).  Geography is as good a place to begin as any.

 Geography

The Nike National cross country meet (formerly NTN, now NXN) has been firmly lodged in Portland, Oregon, since its inception, but boys club teams from east of the Mississippi have had a stranglehold on the title through the first four years of the series.  York IL, Saratoga NY, Coatesville PA and Neuqua Valley IL are the predecessors to this year’s champion, and all four weathered the rugged conditions on the Portland Meadows course better than any of their challengers from elsewhere in the country. 

The Northwest’s own North Central WA has been ranked #1 in the nation on Marc Bloom’s Harrier Magazine Super 25 all season, but if they’re to improve five spots from their 6th-place finish in 2007 to the top of the heap, they’ll have to overcome the trend of teams who get in-flight movies on their travel to Portland coming away with the trophy every year.  If there’s a team with the horses to break that streak, it could well be North Central (competing as North Spokane XC at NXN).  Many observers compare them favorably to the Mead WA teams of the early 1990's, which were considered among the all-time great squads in high school history.  With a nearly interchangeable front four and a daunting 1-5 spread, they enter as the team to beat, even if they are somewhat west of that long winding river on the map.

 Weather

NTN is all about mud!  And puddles!  And ankle-deep water!  And mud!  And…50-degrees, dry and partly cloudy?  That’s the latest forecast for Saturday’s championship races, proving that Nike’s corporate reach has yet to extend to weather manipulation.  Unless the tireless workers who labor to set up the Portland Meadows course every year are out there Friday night with buckets and hoses, Saturday’s race will not favor the “mudders” nearly as much as it has in the past. 

Without the slick conditions, the racetrack infield becomes essentially a flat layout with a series of pace-interrupting  whoop-de-doos and some haybales.  While it’s debatable whether the heretofore muddy conditions have been a major factor in the dearth of national titles traveling home with several highly-considered California teams over the years, if ever there was a time when California squads might find a course that closely resembles what they’ve raced on earlier in the season, this might be it.  Current US#2 Dana Hills (Dana Point XC) and US#9 Buchanan (Buchanan XC) have to be loving the forecast right now.  At the recent California state meet, those squads ran the two fastest California boys team times in history, and enter the Meadows primed to reverse the trend of Cali teams running well, but falling just short of the victory stand.


Really smart numbers guys

If you follow the DyeStat message boards at all, you know there are several enthusiastic people around the country who seem to be MENSA members with too much free time on their hands, generating impressively accurate race projections based on some kind of mysterious ninja calculus known as “speed ratings.”  While I don’t pretend to understand the source of these numbers, I do know that they’ve been pretty dang accurate in predicting the outcomes of this meet over the years.  Bill Meylan, who posts his projections on the New York site tullyrunners.com, was among the first to approach these races from such an analytical perspective, and he’s given rise to a number of other prognosticators, most notably Rob “Watchout” Monroe, who posts from Washington state.  Both of these “really smart numbers guys” have current US#1 North Central WA (North Spokane XC) projected to win the boys title, but their data diverges slightly after that.  You can read Mr. Meylan’s projections here, and Watchout’s will be front and center on DyeStat’s homepage later today.


Twins

While it may have no actual impact on the outcome, the power of the multiple birth cannot be ignored in the history of Nike national team champions.  Two of the four prior winners featured prominent twin contributors.  Inaugural titlists York IL had the Dettman twins, Matthew and Eric, and 2006 winner Coatesville PA was led by the Dawson twins, Kyle and Owen.   This might seem like an insignificant coincidence, but when you’re angling for a national title, you need every edge you can get, and two of the top team contenders feature front-running twins in their lineup.  US#2 Dana Hills CA (Dana Point XC) is led by the Valdes brothers, Tyler and Ryan, while US#4 West Windsor Plainsboro North NJ (Plainsboro XC) toes the line with the Rosa twins, Joe and Jim, at the fore.  The Rosa’s have the added advantage of being red head twins, which makes them potentially even more devastating in my book.


Team names

I’m going to be honest here.  Even though I understand why it must be done, the system of naming teams at NXN drives me crazy.  We follow these squads all year long, getting to know the schools and their athletes, and then they assume club names in the postseason which frequently have little semblance to the names of the schools from which they hail.  The added layer of the regional qualifier has created another set of names.  Many of the teams racing in the national final have been given a different moniker for this event than they ran under in their regional meet.   If your high school happens to share the name of your hometown, you tend to be safe, but occasionally clubs end up awkwardly competing with the names of their crosstown rivals. 

At the initial NTN, York IL got away with the cagey reverse spelling of Kroy, so they get credit for running under pretty much their own name.  In ’05, Saratoga Springs NY won as Saratoga XC, so points to them too, for being able to keep it real.  Coatesville PA took the ’06 title running as Bridgetown XC, however, and last year Neuqua Valley IL grabbed the win as Naperville XC.  So it’s 50-50 whether running as a close approximation of your regular season name helps.   It means North Central WA (switched to North Spokane XC) and The Woodlands TX (yup, The Woodlands XC) are on pretty much equal footing.


Individual contender

In 2004, Sean McNamara led his York IL teammates to the title with his resounding individual win.  Chris Derrick repeated the feat in 2007 by fronting his Neuqua Valley IL squad in breaking the tape.  The other two years, winning individuals weren’t connected to winning teams, but it certainly can’t hurt.  The addition of individual qualifiers has made the fields far deeper, and it’s quite likely the individual winner could come from among those unattached runners, but several teams feature frontrunners who could race for the win, or at the very least, kick off the scoring with a single point once unattached athletes are removed from the tally.   The Woodlands TX has probably the most dangerous threat for the win, with two-time DyeStat Performer of the Week Reed Connor.  Connor ran to the NXN South title, and has emerged as the top Texan this season in a crowded field of contenders.  Other who could lead their team to the win with gutsy 1-point efforts include Dana Hills CA star Tyler Valdes, West Windsor Plainsboro North NJ soph Joe Rosa, and York IL senior Steve Sulkin.  North Central WA was fronted at the Northwest Regional by normal #2 man Jeff Howard, who came away as the individual winner, but Andrew Kimpel showed he’s ready to lead the squad again with his come-from-behind win at the Nike BorderClash last week.  They are as potent a top-two as any in the country.


Darkhorses

A few other things to consider:

Fear those who descend from altitude.  That would include Albuquerque Academy NM (Albuquerque XC, last year’s 3rd place team) and the aptly-named Alta UT (Alta XC).  Alta, in particular, could perform a lot better than their US#16 national ranking might suggest.

Fear any team coached by Bill Aris.  That would be US#19 Fayetteville-Manlius NY (Manlius XC ).  Mr. Aris' record at these events is off the charts.

Fear the hometown advantage.  Sometimes underdogs do amazing things in front of partial crowds.  Jesuit OR (Portland XC) is a team that potentially fits into that category.  They feature no dominant frontrunner, but bring an interchangeable “giant killer” pack that prides itself on tight team compressions.  If they stay close together and move their pack far enough up, they might give the Portlanders something to cheer about.
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