Wow, time sure flies. Between all of the bonus little league baseball games I've been able to watch, and several trips to the Buffalo area, my non-working hours have been quite full and have prevented more posting. I've had the Boys Preseason team forecast available for a bit, but haven't had time to post with some comments.
Anyway, both TullyRunners and now MileSplit have weighed in with their 2013 preseason view, so here is my view added to the mix:
1 |
Thomas |
70 |
2 |
Mendon |
92 |
3 |
Fairport |
121 |
4 |
Brighton |
159 |
5 |
Hilton |
191 |
6 |
Irondequoit |
194 |
7 |
Arcadia |
197 |
8 |
Victor |
216 |
9 |
Sutherland |
272 |
10 |
Rush Henrietta |
276 |
11 |
Penfield |
307 |
12 |
Honeoye Falls Lima |
335 |
13 |
Schroeder |
340 |
14 |
Canandaigua |
357 |
15 |
Batavia |
437 |
16 |
Churchville Chili |
476 |
17 |
East Rochester |
489 |
18 |
Athena |
495 |
19 |
Gates Chili |
515 |
20 |
Spencerport |
545 |
21 |
Brockport |
566 |
22 |
Odyssey |
582 |
23 |
Olympia |
636 |
24 |
East Irondequoit |
637 |
It's very strange to see some of these preseason rankings. R-H 10th, even with Mickey Burke returning as one of the very top runners in the state? HF-L 12th, despite showing that they can develop new runners year after year? ER 17th, ahead of a bunch of much larger schools, including an Athena team that was quite solid last year?
Other parts of the ranking are not surprising at all. The current group of Thomas seniors were already making a big impact as sophomores and it always looked like this could be their year. Schroeder lost a boatload of seniors last year, including all but our 5th fastest runner at Counties. And Victor, despite having three runners that should be up near the front of most races (could go 1-2-3 against at least 16 other schools in league meets), drops off a great deal to runners four and then five, falling to eighth in the preseason numbers.
What did the other prognosticators say? MileSplit looks at the Section V Boys in Class A and B this way:
Class A
7. Thomas
10. Fairport
15t. Irondequoit
17. Hilton
28. Rush-Henrietta
Class B
2. Mendon
9. Brighton
10. HF-L
24. Sutherland
It looks like they are overlooking Victor in Class A and Arcadia in Class B, and have great expectations of HF-L retooling.
TullyRunners makes the following forecast:
Overall
9t. Thomas (6th in Class A)
11. Mendon (2nd in Class B)
20t. Fairport (10th in A)
25. Irondequoit (14th in A)
Brighton (8th in B)
Hilton (20th in A)
Arcaida (10th in B)
HF-L (13th in B)
The main differences in the other forecasts and mine seems to be that they expect Irondequoit to solve their 5th man problem (45 second gap at Counties and 53 seconds at McQuaid between their 4th and 5th fastest returning runners), and the others believe HF-L will find some runners (only 7 returning runners have data that I have recorded - but a healthy Tyler Urckfitz could save them a boatload of points), and they don't believe that Victor can get help for their big 3 (all capable of top 10 at Counties).