Chloe Andrie and Emily Wolff figure to be among the regions top contenders for the girls individual title. Photos by Paul Jaeger.
5A Region 1 and 5A Region 3 have my preseason nominations as the toughest 5A regions to advance out of. It's too soon to way just which one will be the toughest, but there won't be any easy passes out of either.
Boys
1. Thornton - I had to think long and hard about who would wear the #1 billing for this region (see the #2 team, below), but finally landed on Thornton. Any way you look at it on paper, it's a very tight pack, but Thornton has the advantage of trajectory. While some teams are perpetual powers and more or less seem to find their level each year, Thornton has been a team on a steady incline for four or five years now. The Trojans will be heard from this fall. Jason O'Shea returns four sub-17 guys in Sean Paiz, Jose Garcia, Joshua Joseph, and Roger Rodriguez-Perez. He's also proven he can develop tal...