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July has begun, and thus so also have the cross country previews for this coming fall.
I will be doing, among other things, league-by-league previews across the entire state and across all classifications. The general format of these will be begin with virtual meet team scoring based on last year's cross country results for returning runners, then this spring's 1600 and 3200 results for returning runners. Of necessity, I'll need to make some judgment calls about how many individuals to include in the team scoring in each case. There will not be a constant number of individuals used across the board.
Incidentally, if you are a Colorado Track XC Insider, you can access--and play with--all of these cross country team scoring models on your own. Simply click on Rankings in the main navigation bar, then on XC Team Scores. From there, set the dashboard as you want it and let our database of results grind out the rankings for you! If you don't get what you wanted the first time, play with the settings a little until the desired results appear.
You do, of course, have to use some discretion when looking at virtual meet team scoring. One advantage of looking at cross country virtual meet team scoring is that it compares apples to apples: past cross country results to anticipated cross country results. But, a lot may have happened since last fall. Some athletes may have dropped cross country, and many have gotten better faster than their peers have. And, sometimes virtual cross country results--even based over an entire season--are heavily dependent on one very fast course a particular team or set of teams may have run. All that helps to account for why track (1600 and 3200) results become important to look at as well. They give us a more up-to-date reading on where these athletes are than last fall's cross country results. But, not everybody who runs cross country runs 1600s and 3200s in track. Some people who run cross country don't run track at all. So, all that is where user discretion comes into play.
Tools like virtual meet scoring often show us a lot, but they rarely show us everything.
After looking at the team scoring, we'll discuss prospects for the teams in the league, perhaps bringing out some things along the way that the virtual meet team scoring doesn't show. Where I have knowledge of incoming freshmen who could make an impact, this is where you will find that information.
You can expect the first preview segment to publish later today (July 1). Publications will continue to appear until the beginning of the competitive season.
As always, comments are welcome in response to these articles. I will try to maintain a production rate that averages out to at least one new preview per day. There will be a couple of spots during the summer where that will be hard to maintain, but we'll set that as a goal and try to attain it despite any attendant challenges.
All preview articles will be linked in a series. This introductory article is linked in the same series. You can get to an index for the series simply by clicking on the series name at the top of any of the articles, right below my byline and right above the date.