Boys NXN regionals 2023 which regions will be the fastest next year? which deserve at-large bid?

I was looking at a direct meet to meet comparison (NXR 2022 to 2023).

Tullyrunners had Rocky at 7th in NW preseason and Dyestat had them barely top 10 I believe. Both them and Franklin came in behind a handle of others in the preseason (Seattle Prep, Jesuit, Boise, Idaho Falls, etc.). Excellent work by Franklin as well this season finish 3rd at NXR.

I wasn't saying those meets exactly lined up with Tiger Grizz. Everyone at Rocky loves Tiger Grizz because:

A - it's a real cross country course that doesn't get enough credit from outside observers and speedratings, it's none of the Woodbridge or Runninglane crap where the meet director is apologizing because the course is almost a 5k

B - The whole team can travel in one day so while it's a travel trip, it's much cheaper than a Lewiston type trip.

It's a key tradition in the sense that it's not going to be going away soon

With 5 at large individuals, I'm curious how the guys stack up.

If Franklin, Austin Vandegrift, Riverton and Niwott are the at large qualifiers, the first two boys out in each region are:

NW:

Noah Laughlin-Hall: 189.50 speed rating for 7th at NW Regional. 3rd at Oregon 5A state meet for 7 seconds off the win, 5th at Nike Portland. 70th fastest speed rating in the country prior to this last weekend. Loss at Oregon State meet was to Kitchen and Tostenson. He beat Tostenson at the NW regional.
Andrew Ringert: 188.37 speed rating for 8th at NW regional. 3rd at Idaho 5A state meet, 8 seconds off the win at the state meet. He's raced in a lot of big meets this year, and has improved in placement over the course of the season. 36th at Woodbridge, 14th at Bob Firman, 6th at Nike Portland, 3rd at the district and state meets, 8th at NXR NW. 92nd fastest speed rating in the country prior to last weekend. He lost to Heemeyer and Stadtlander at the Idaho State meet, but beat Stadtlander at NXR.

Both of these guys ran faster than the 5th individual qualifier at every version of this meet.

SW:
Zach Hillhouse: 185.47 speed rating at SW Regional, 9th place. Season's best speed rating. That's by far his best performance on the season- 31st at the Utah State meet, 9th at the Pre-Footlocker meet. He did not have a speed rating that appeared in the top 655 marks recorded this season prior to this weekend. His mark here would put him at 175th, but will probably end up around 190th once all the marks from this weekend are put in.
Brogan Collins: 185.01 speed rating, 10th place. 7th at Colorado 4A state meet. 33 seconds off of the win at the state meet. 449th best speed rating heading into the weekend. His mark from this weekend would put him around 181st, so probably closer to 200th.

Midwest:

Samuel Ricchiuti- 190.73 for 6th. Huge resume on the season. Worst finish on the season was 6th at NXR, and 4th at Ohio State meet. He beat all the guys that beat him at the Ohio State meet, and has beat every guy that beat him prior to NXR. His speed rating is good for 49th on the season. 2nd at MSU Spartan Invite, 2nd at Portage XC.
Ryan Smith- 190.13 for 7th at NXR. DNF at the Ohio State meet, 4th at his regional meet before that. 2nd at the one big invitational he had on the season. Speed rating is good for 56th on the season.

Heartland:
Nolan Sutter: 189.07 for 7th. 5th at Griak, which was his worst in-season placement over the course of the season. 4th at the Minnesota AAA State Meet, 22 seconds off the win. His mark at Griak was 188.50, so he's been pretty consistent over the course of the season. His NXR mark was worth the 78th best speed rating on the season. Last year's 5th place individual qualifier was 14:55- he ran 14:53.8.
Grady Lenn: 186.63 for 9th. Undefeated until the Wisconsin Division 1 State Meet, where he took 3rd. He was 11 seconds off the win there. His Wisconsin State Meet performance was his best speed rating of the season at 187.33, which ranks as the 128th best performance of the season. He lost to the same two boys at NXR that he lost to at State.

South:
Brady Mullen: 182.87 for 9th. 5th at Nike XC Town Invite, Louisiana State Champ. Super disappointing performance here. Has the 79th best speed rating on the season. I can't imagine he would be picked as an at-large.
Alexander Niemic: 182.70 for 11th. 5th at the Cowboy Jamboree, 2nd at the Texas 4A state meet, 9 seconds off the win. 288th best speed rating on the season.

Southeast:
Colin Eckerman: 191.37 for 6th. Tennessee State Champ, 4th at Jesse Owens Classic, beat everyone that beat him in season at least once. 32nd fastest speed rating in the country at the Tennessee state championship.
Keegan Smith: 190.77 for 7th. 6th at Southern Showcase, 3rd at Tennessee state champ, but did beat Eckerman in season. 41st best speed rating in the country at the Jesse Owens Classic, which he won.

I would think the order of the at large boys would go Eckerman, Keegan Smith, Ricchuiti, Laughlin-Hall, Sutter, Ringert, Ryan Smith, Lenn, Hillhouse, Collins, Mullen, Neimic.

The order I have makes sense to me- the only one that requires some explanation is Ryan Smith. He's as low as he is because he only has the single performance that is really good, and has the DNF at state.

NE, NY, and CA still to go, so the list will change quite a bit I'm sure.

I can't imagine the NXN committee going past two deep in any region, so that's why I listed the first two out after the current likely at-large teams. It will be interesting to see how much credence they give to upward trending individuals, how much they weight they will give to racing at big races, and how that impacts their decision making.

Do the speed ratings for SW take into account the course conditions? SW course was extremely muddy, kids wiping out left and right, running around huge puddles, etc.

Right now. Southwest 3 individual bids, Southeast 2 individual bids. Every other region 0 bids. Speed ratings are very high for midwest/heartland regions. Speed ratings are slightly high in northwest region.

To point A- if a meet the size of Woodbridge bills itself as 3 miles, and teams are flying in from around the country, it should be 3 miles. I would expect the Bob Firman meet director to be apologizing if he made the course 3.16-3.17 miles and fixing the course so that it's the right distance.

Call races the distances that they are. If it's not actually a 3 mile or a 5k, don't call it that. If you have 5000+ kids coming to race 3 miles, though, it should be 3 miles. I seem to recall posts last year about how Jeff Howard requested the distance for Gib Floyd be changed on athletic.net to reflect that it was 3 miles, and not 5k.

Really? There are a lot of guys that have far superior credentials to the top 2 SW guys, much less the third. The NW guys have better seasons than they do alone. The midwest guys are legit. Especially Ricchiuti. He has an absolute monster of a resume.

The NW guys ran 15:13 and 15:16 on the Bob Firman course. Heading into the race, those were the 10th and 14th fastest performances at NXR NW ever.

Answering the other questions- speed ratings are relative to other runners. They take into account times vs. past iterations on the same course, but the heavier weighting is given to how you performed vs. other guys. Each point is worth 3 seconds, so finishing 30 seconds behind Danny Simmons gives you 10 points less.

The SW teams are super deep, but I don't get the feeling that the individuals are all that deep compared to other regions. Do you think that Zach Hillhouse and Brogan Collins would have run that fast at NXR NW?

Woodbridge was around 12,000+ kids racing, with around 500 teams competing. California teams aren't as interesting in Mt. Sac anymore, which used to be huge so expect the number to be close to 25,000+ in the next few years.

Well, that makes it even more important for the race to be the actual distance that they are saying it is.

NXR Southwest and Woodbridge were the two largest races that have taken place this season. NXR Southeast comes in 3rd.

To put in perspective on just how good southwest really is, Brady Mullen mid-season was running 14:59 at Lavern Gibson Course for a 189 speed rating. That is only 4 second behind Ricchiuti at nxr midwest, so 1 speed rating difference. His Jesuit team averaged a 175 speed rating at lavern gibson.

Jesuit La and Brady Mullen show up to their first big west race, NXR South. Generally, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Idaho, Oregon, and California all have comparable speed ratings because they race each other quite often.

Mullen get's a 182.87 speed rating, the Jesuit La team averages 167.

Yes a 185 in the NXR Southwest race was like a 192 in the midwest/heartland.

Just my thoughts on that.

Edit: To be fair, I am sort of biased because I come from California. I could be wrong when the NXN race happens. Also Jackson Heidesch/Simeon Birnbaum negative split the heartland race last year. The Southeast race was also negative split, so those guys are faster than they look on paper. Relooking at the results, NXR Southwest at-large individuals are too far back, so only 1 bid.

You are correct, the Rocky coach asked the Gib Floyd timer in 2022 to change the athletic.net results from 5k to 3 miles (despite others at the meet saying it didn’t matter). He didn’t want his kids to run huge “PRs” when they were actually running a course that was closer to 3 miles. That’s the opposite of Woodbridge and the hot thing to do these days (find the fastest course possible and complain if it’s slightly long based off of kids GPS data).

You have to remember that the Rocky coach came from the North Central program in Spokane that went on a good run from 2007-2015ish. That program from what I’ve learned had zero emphasis on times, athletically it was all about place goals to help the team and character development. That’s why they will never end up chasing fast times….Unfortunately every third year in Idaho will have the state meet at Lewiston which is basically Idahos version of RunningLane.

It's not long based off of GPS data. It was long when it was wheeled. Look at Rich G's tweets about it. The GPS data tipped them off to it being long, and they went back and verified. This is either an ignorant or intentionally dishonest post.

It's not some negative against Woodbridge or the teams that race there that they care that the course is accurately measured. If kids show up to throw down a fast mark and get on the radar of a college coach, I certainly wouldn't want to be running a course that's 20 seconds long for a boy that's going to run 15:00. The coaches that had kids that raced on day 1 asked for the results to reflect 3.07. Asking for a race to be accurately marked is the same exact thing as what Jeff did, not the opposite. It's only the opposite in that the distance moved the opposite direction from what occurred at Gib Floyd.

If there's zero emphasis on times, then why did he care if his kids ran huge "PRs?"

It would have been dishonest to have it reported on athletic.net as longer than it was. I agree though, times do not matter in XC unless it’s a historic/consistent course and you want to compare year to year, but even then you have to consider other factors as well that could change the dynamic of the race each year.

Okay. So now please explain to me your reason as to why it was wrong for athletes and coaches to ask that Woodbridge be reported accurately.

.07 miles is not "slightly long." It's 113 meters long if you are running the course the way they measure it- 2 feet from the inside line, tangent to tangent. Most kids were probably running a 5k on the Friday night races.

I think the SW will get 2 at large teams, which gets Jourdon, Westfall, Middaugh, Steadman, and Brunner in.

I don't see Zach Hillhouse or Brogan Collins having the resume to go as individuals, especially because I think there will be a sense of the SW being very represented with 33 total runners in the field already.

If Riverton doesn't get an at-large, then I could see the SW getting 2 at-large individual spots, but both of those would be Riverton guys, so you bump into Riverton being good enough upfront to be competitive in a big meet.

Put it on athletic.net as 3.07 then. When a course gets shorter mid-meet our sport looks soft. I get that they came for a 3 mile, but report it as 3.07 and each coach can be responsible for healing the emotional wounds that are inflicted on their runners by the times.

Which is what they did for the Friday races.

It's a two day meet. You can't have your marquee meet have a screw up to that degree and not fix it when you have the opportunity to do so. It's not about kids "emotional wounds" so much as it's about running a good meet. Refusing to fix it is how you get teams that opt to go to other meets. Why trust a meet director to handle anything if they can't fix an easy thing like that?

Speed ratings don’t take into account anything except the time between runners

Midwest speed ratings are high because the course for NXR is challenging and the top 3 finishers ran an Indiana #1&2 all time and Illinois #1 all time on that course. My opinion being around nike since the inception is that the Midwest results are very impressive. Kids have ran 10-15 seconds slower and went on to win Nike. I will admit the level of talent across the country is much more impressive now but i anticipate the midwest kids will finish very high.