Rodrigo Baeza has helped to elevate Fountain Valley to a top-tier 2A program this season. Photo by Alan Versaw.
One of the most important differences between small-school cross country and large-school cross country is nicely illustrated by what happens between the first and last meets of the season.
And nowhere is this transition better illustrated than with the teams of the Fountain Valley School. This year, Fountain Valley opened at the Vista Ridge Invitational on September 2.
On opening day, and on a fast course, Jordan Clementi was the top guy for FVS. Clementi took second, in a mostly JV-level meet of comprised of TCA and a handful of larger schools. He ran 19:14. Daniel Wilkins was the next finisher for Fountain Valley at 20:12. Fountain Valley's Sam Olvera and Hannah Carrese went 1-2 on the girls' side, running 21:30 and 22:30. In terms of Fountain Valley's team, what came behind these two boys and two girls? Two big gaps! Big enough that you could have sipped a steaming cup of hot chocolate--but you wouldn't have wanted to on this day. So, maybe time enough to savor a snow cone.
Now, fast forward to Friday. Somewhere in the interim, Rodgrio Baeza has stepped up--seemingly out of nowhere, though he did run for the team last year--and runs a 17:23 for second in the region. Clementi finishes fourth in 17:45, and Wilkins eighth in 18:31. Fountain Valley easily outdistances Peyton and Rocky Ford for the regional title.
A 20:12 guy at the first meet, such as Daniel Wilkins, isn't likely to get a sniff of varsity at any point in the season in a well-established 4A or 5A program. At the 2A level, though, he's critical to his team's chances later in the season. He gets an opportunity to develop at the varsity level that he likely wouldn't have in a larger school.
A similar, but not quite as dramatic, scenario has played out over the season in Lyons. On September 11, Zach Pfeifer ran 17:53, Sean Flynn ran 18:30, and Ryan Boucher ran 20:01. This past week, on the same course, they ran 17:39, 17:56, and 17:55, respectively. Pfeifer's drop in time is certainly not dramatic, but his was a strong 2A time to begin with. In a competitive larger school program, he may have had to have shown a larger drop in time over the season to maintain a varsity position, but not in 2A.
Let's be candid about this: necessity is the mother of improvement.
Boucher's drop is another example of the kind of delta that almost never happens in a varsity lineup outside of small school programs. In competitive programs in larger schools, a 20:01 tends to get you set on the back burner and rarely heard from again--at least for that season.
I know Coach Roberts at Lyons has summer expectations for his runners, but, realistically speaking, it's not cutthroat for varsity positions in summer workouts at a 2A school (Note: I am bearing in mind the CHSAA regulation that any summer workouts must be strictly optional and not a requirement for varsity status in the fall. Nevertheless, summer training has everything to do with who is ready to step into varsity positions when practice does officially begin.)
Among the girls on the Fountain Valley team, the leading faces are still Olvera and Carrese, now running 21:04 and 21:27, but Emma Reynolds has now moved up to 22:01. With a 2-3-7 scoring finish, Fountain Valley cleaned house on their regional opponents.
The progression that Olvera and Carrese made seems reasonably in line with the kind of progression you might see from high level 4A and 5A runners over the course of a season, but from a more modest beginning point.
In 2010, it is altogether apparent that having a competitive 5A girls team pretty much requires that you have at least four girls who can dip under 20:00 on a faster course. That standard used to be softer--it is no longer. Colorado is a first-class state in girls' cross country, probably taking a back seat to only California and New York.
Notice I said a "competitive" 5A team. Championship caliber requires even more than that. This year's troika of dominant 5A girls teams--Boulder, Fort Collins, and Monarch--each have five under 19:45 on a faster course, plus a few more breathing down their backs. Liberty misses fitting into this group because their #5 has "only" run 20:15 this season. As good as 20:15 is in a lot of programs, it's not going to get Liberty a seat at this table.
What stands out about the Fountain Valley girls, and small school cross country in general, is the backfilling behind the one and two runners. You can realistically backfill your last scoring position or two during the course of the season if the backfill point hovers around 22:00. A sometime-during-the-course-of-the-season backfill at 19:45, however, is about as common as a 100-year-flood.
Whether with boys or girls, the small school team that logs healthy totals of summer mileage at a reasonable pace becomes dominant--in a hurry. Most recently, that has been exemplified by the Nederland and Telluride teams. At 4A and 5A, a healthy total of summer mileage is simply a prerequisite to finding a place among the upper third of teams. That is to say, it's a prerequisite to being a team with any reasonable expectation of making it to state.
Is 3A large school or small school? There are elements of both in the classification. Salida was in its fourth season under the direction of coach Kenny Wilcox before they won a boys' state title in 2009. Coaches don't get much better than Wilcox. You probably can't be a serious title contender in your first year as a serious program in 3A. 3A is like 4A and 5A in that dominant teams do not emerge in a single season. There's a long road of accumulated miles to travel to dominance.
The kind of showing Frontier Academy has made this fall (although the program formerly co-oped with University High School, none of this year's varsity runners ran cross country with University prior to this year) is probably pretty close to top-end progress in the 3A classification for a new or newly serious program.
Alamosa's boys have competed very nicely in 3A this fall, but bear in mind that they came down from 4A. They brought with them a piece of the larger school mindset when they came down to 3A.
3A is definitely not 5A in terms of girls competition, but having a stable of four who can run below 21:00 is now pretty much the standard of a competitive 3A girls team. That represents a substantial drop over the last five or six years. While getting someone to run 21:00 is a great deal easier than taking her down to 19:45, there isn't an abundance of girls who will break 21:00 in their first year of high school cross country. All the more so if it isn't necessary to go faster than 21:00 to earn a varsity position on her team. Remember, necessity is the mother of improvement.
The 3A (and 2A!) schools that make the most rapid progress are those that consistently poke their noses into large-school meets or run up to the large-school divisions of dual division meets. When this happens, the necessity that gives birth to improvement is the necessity of not getting buried in a more competitive field. Telluride has proved it can be done--even at the 2A level--this year.
Still, many 3A teams make it to state without a large or well-organized component of summer training. Each year, however, the count of such teams diminishes a little. In that sense, 3A is moving away from the small-school camp and becoming more like a large-school classification.
So, are the differences between 5A, 4A, 3A, and 2A simply a matter of enrollment counts? It all begins there, but that is way too simplistic of an explanation. It is not simply the case that, over time, a school of 2000 students will have five times as many sub-17 boys as a school of 400 has. Chances are, there will be more than five times as many boys in the larger school who actually cross the 17:00 threshold.
One of the reasons this happens is that you're more likely to have the number of kids interested in distance necessary for a critical mass in a larger school than a smaller school. The team environment helps here, but increased numbers make the critical mass more likely. A critical mass means you have a core group with a common interest who hold each other accountable and help to shape one another's dreams with respect to cross country. But size of the roster is just the beginning. Moreover, critical masses of interest have occurred with some frequency at smaller schools as well.
All other things being equal, there is more competition for positions on a team at a larger school than a smaller school. If you have to run sub-17 to make varsity (granted, even in 5A, not many Colorado teams are there, but you get the idea), the young man currently running 17:50 is a lot more likely to eventually run sub-17 than if that same 17:50 time places him first on his team.
The motivational power of whatever mark it takes to make varsity, make the scoring five, or whatever your standard becomes, is magnified once meets begin happening. A cross country runner quickly learns what it takes to score in the top five, top 20, or top half of the meets his or her team is going to.
Therefore, if your team is running in large-school meets, the transformation to a sub-20 girls' time is going to happen a lot faster than if you camp out in small-school meets. If your team is frequenting high-level large school meets, you can probably speed the process up a little more (though possibly with certain added risks).
If you're dealing with a competitive personality type, never underestimate the disappointment of finishing well back in a field as a motivational factor for improvement. On the other hand, in most cases it also takes some insightful coaching nudges to redirect that disappointment into the kind of driving force that produces a sub-17 guy or a sub-20 girl. Not all kids, not even all competitive kids, respond well to disappointment in the absence of supportive direction. Worse yet, the same nudges don't work with every individual.
These would be the main reasons that 5A has more than it's share of the top runners in the state. And those 2A and 3A athletes who are climbing high in the rankings also happen to be largely those whose schools schedule more meets against larger school competition.
Fish grow bigger in bigger ponds.