Herriman - NXN champion after not winning state meet or NXR

oh? on God?

TBF if I'm the AD, I'm going to be pretty livid if a guy didn't back off training for a state meet and lost that while prepping for a meet where the team is techinically not affliated with the school.

They ran to win but thier top guy crashed and burned and didn't score. I'm sure Soles wanted to win, but they would have had to beat the only team that could beat them. They were right with American forks at State. Chillax bro. I'm sure thier principle is devastated to have a guy winning them national titles in his 2nd cross country season at the school.

American Fork got out slow and was in 16th? (or something like that) at 1k. Much more difficult to make up ground in a relatively dense field in the mud. That’s the biggest factor in Herriman winning- way bigger than “peaking”, and it’s not even close.

(And that’s nothing against Herriman- they executed properly for the specific conditions of the race and were rewarded with a National Championship).

Yes, none of AF’s guys (including Simmons) were in the top 100 at the 1k. I was baffled by that. It’s like they didn’t give themselves permission to win.

If they were like, maybe 5th, at the 1k, would have won.

At NXR they were in second (almost first) at the first mile and they ended up dominating that

Kinda sad that AF didn’t win their first NXN title, but 4 runner-ups is still better than almost every school out there

4th spot will be up for grabs. Candidates:
- Coronado
- Mountain Vista (returns 3 scorers and always seems to have random seniors come out of nowhere)
- Cheyenne Mountain (has some good young talent coming back next year)
- Valor Christian if they figure something out like you said

Actually, of all these teams, Coronado will have a best chance to get top 4. They finished 19th at NXR but they were missing their #1 guy (Horton). They will probably be up there with Mountain View

coronado doesn’t have depth: gonna have to have their entire top 5 feeling good to make it, and that rarely happens

I'm sure they would have rather never podiumed if it meant that they had been able to win at least 1 NXN title. Getting second is just devastating, especially when you're the favorite.(like when AF was the favorite in 2016 and got beat by a team that wasn't even considered to be in contention (Bozeman)).

There are way too many championship style races today in our sport. Most states have an "elite meet" at the beginning of Track & Field, state championships, and of course many huge invitationals in the spring, summer, and winter as well for top athletes. Coaches also schedule State Team Championships during the middle of the season. In Cross Country there are huge invitationals in the summer or early fall, state championships, and I HAVE NO IDEA AND NO INTEREST IN KNOWING HOW MANY NATIONALS IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER!

"America uses athletes they do not develop them." Jason Young, Olympic Discus Thrower

In 2016 American Fork didn’t really have the depth to take first at NXN. 3 All-Americans is really good, but their 4&5 were ways back. Bozeman put 5 in front of their #4.

But AF’s #4&5 that year were sophomores and did the best they could which is all you can ask for in the sport

I think it made sense to consider Bozeman as a contender for 2016. They took 8th in 2015 and had only 1 senior. They also had a really good transfer (McComas) come in in 2016.

Sure it did, especially after seeing AF go 1-2-3 at NXR Southwest. It's cool to look at it from the perspective after the race, but before? American Fork literally had almost no way of losing. It was basically like Newbury Park losing last year. They'd taken 2nd the year prior and also returned most of their guys.

Well they have Katie Rainsberger’s mom as a coach. And people are saying in other threads that she is a good coach.
They also seem to always get some really good freshmen

Lots of teams are in this situation

And many of them end up qualifying for NXN

Very poor grammar