Colorado Track XC All-Freshman Girls Team

Colorado All-State XC 2013

Nov 08, 2013

<h3 style="text-align: center;"> Celebrating 2013's Top Runners</h3>

Lauren Gregory topped every category in the compilation for freshman of the year. Photo by Paul Jaeger.

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 involved aren't always familiar across the state. So, to select the Colorado Track XC All-Freshman girls 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. Lauren Gregory, Fort Collins

2. Maya Browning, Fairview

3. Holly Bent, Monarch

4. Devon Peterson, Cherry Creek

5. Lauren Offerman, Mountain View

6. Julia Vitella, Regis Jesuit

7. Audrey Lookner, Monarch

8. Devon Kroeker, Pine Creek

9. Mikayla Gaffney, Silver Creek

10. Jenna McCaffrey, Niwot

11. Kayla Young, Denver North

12. Natalie Platil, Horizon

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 girls and found this ordering:

1. Lauren Gregory, Fort Collins

2. Maya Browning, Fairview

3. Devon Peterson, Cherry Creek

4. Kayla Young, Denver North

5. Ashley Polk, Vista Ridge

6. Lauren Offerman, Mountain View

7. Natalie Platil, Horizon

8. Holly Bent, Monarch

9. Julia Vitella, Regis Jesuit

10. Audrey Lookner, Monarch

11. Lina Krueck, ThunderRidge

12. Devon Kroeker, 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. Lauren Gregory, Fort Collins

2. Devon Peterson, Cherry Creek

3. Maya Browning, Fairview

4. Lauren Offerman, Mountain View

5. Devon Kroeker, Pine Creek

6. Julia Vitella, Regis Jesuit

7. Holly Bent, Monarch

8. Audrey Lookner, Monarch

9. Lina Krueck, ThunderRidge

10. Mikayla Gaffney, Silver Creek

11. Jenna McCaffrey, Niwot

12. Emily Leidig, Thompson Valley

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: