Monroe County Boys XC - Preseason Team View

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).