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Celebrating 2013's Top Runners</h3>
Monarch's Isaac Green topped the charts in every criteria used for selection. Contributed photo.
Picking an all-freshman team isn't as easy as you might think. It's very difficult to throw this one out to a selection committee because many of the names--and especially the boys' names--aren't yet familiar across the state. So, to select the Colorado Track XC All-Freshman boys team, I went straight to the Colorado Track XC database to make the selection. I've reproduced below what I found.
The Colorado Track XC All-State teams were heavily tilted toward state performances. So, the first thing I identified were the top 12 freshman times from state. In order, they went like this (complete list of state times):
1. Isaac Green, Monarch
2. Isaiah De La Cerda, Alamosa
3. Cam Dimas, Fort Collins
4. Tanner Norman, The Classical Academy
5. Andrew King, Silver Creek
6. Miguel Baltazar, Alamosa
7. Ian Meek, Montrose
8. Bryce Grahn, South Baca
9. Greg Lund, Fairview
10. Jonathan Velo, Denver North
11. Daniel Hamson, Cherry Creek
12. Dylan Zurfluh, Estes Park
But, not everything in the Colorado Track XC All-State teams hinged on the state meet. So, next I looked at the rankings of season times for all freshmen boys and found this ordering:
1. Isaac Green, Monarch
2. Cam Dimas, Fort Collins
3. Ian Meek, Montrose
4. Brennan Lyle, Fairview
5. Maximilliano Martinez, Widefield
6. Tanner Norman, The Classical Academy
7. Isaiah De La Cerda, Alamosa
8. Andrew King, Silver Creek
9. Alexis Aguirre, Battle Mountain
10. Jackson Encinias, Castle View
11. Scott Johnson, Legend
12. Tanner Palacios, Pine Creek
But, a list of best times is heavily dependent on courses run and conditions under which those course were run, so I took one final look, this time at average times run for all courses during the season. That look yielded this list:
1. Isaac Green, Monarch
2. Isaiah De La Cerda, Alamosa
3. Tanner Norman, The Classical Academy
4. Andrew King, Silver Creek
5. Maximilliano Martinez, Widefield
6. Max Sevcik, Arvada West
7. Cam Dimas, Fort Collins
8. Andrew Rudnicki, Palmer Ridge
9. Luke Zacharias, Boulder
10. Scott Johnson, Legend
11. Tanner Palacios, Pine Creek
12. Mitchell Shaw, Air Academy
At this point, we've exhausted the easy lists to extract from the MileSplit database, so it is time to build a selection criteria. For the purposes of this All-Freshman team, we assign 12 points to first place on any of these lists, 11 to second, 10 to third, and so on down to 1 for 12th. Multiply the state order of finish list by two and add the other two lists to the total, and we come up with the following for the Colorado Track XC All-Freshman team:
Isaac Green, Monarch, 48 points
Isaiah De La Cerda, Alamosa, 39 points
Cam Dimas, Fort Collins, 37 points
Tanner Norman, The Classical Academy, 35 points
Andrew King, Silver Creek, 30 points
Ian Meek, Montrose, 22 points
Maximilliano Martinez, Widefield, 16 points
Photos by Alan Versaw, Paul Jaeger, and Ashley Green