Parowan won this one last year, followed by a tight pack of Rowland Hall, San Juan, Richfield, and Millard. How does it shape up this year?
Last year's top 50, with this spring's graduates removed (athletes of unknown year of graduation are marked with a question mark) looks like this:
North Summit, more or less a team lurking in the shadows from last year's state cross country results, comes out of this analysis looking to hold the top hand. It helps to have two guys with the same last name both running under 10:30. Siblings like Caleb and Hudson Zwhalen often end up being a huge factor in small school cross country. Hudson's track performance suggests his state meet in cross country needs to be considered an anomaly.
By the way, I have variant spellings on the last names of these two, but I'm pretty sure they would spell their last name the same way. Any help here?
Richfield counters with a pair of siblings (I presume) of their own--Caleb and Steven Monsen.
Grand County's stock rose a little with a good track season at the 3200 meter distance. Jacob Francis should be a great point guy for the Red Devils. If they can turn that into solid cross country times, they figure to be in this fall's race as well. Rowland Hall, despite having a great front runner in Ryan Westermann, might be fighting issues of depth this fall. Parowan, however, seems to have enough in the pipeline to be a factor in the title race once again.
This one gets more interesting the more you look at it. It should become even more interesting once the racing starts in August.
If you're looking for more to chew on, consider dropping in on this spring's rankings of returning 1600 runners as well. The first thing you'll find there is that there's one more name you need to consider as a potential producer on the Richfield cross country roster.
And, one more thing, I'm always open to submissions of nice, crisp photos of anyone mentioned in an article for a cover photo where I don't have one. The main requirement I have is that the photo has to work in a 16x9 horizontal proportion. Any photos used will be credited as requested with the submission. First come, first served (posted).