The state meet is just 5 days away. Here are 10 questions I'm looking forward to having answered on Saturday.
1. Will someone beat the fastest time run by a girl at the state meet? Meredith Snow’s 17:51.4 still stands as the standard. While many feel the changes to the course in recent years has made the overall course easier, Snow’s record still has not been beaten. Somewhere around 12:53 PM (18 minutes after the projected start of the Class 4 girls race) we may have a new #1 mark.. However, while Snow’s record has stood for nine years any record obtained in the Class 4 race will immediately be challenged at when the Class 3 Girls line up at 1:05
2. Will the smallest 1-5 spread win state in the Class 4 Boys race? - I looked at the top 5 finishers in each of the class 4 sectionals. Of those 20 boys only 4 run for a team that won sectionals.
3. Will we have our 3rd different Class 4 Girls Champions in the past 3 years? - Francis Howell was able to break the string of Lee’s Summit West in 2012. Both of those squads are contenders for this year but there are a handful of other schools who could be bringing home state gold on Saturday afternoon.
4. Is this the year Noah Kauppila wins a XC Championship? - Noah’s has had an outstanding high school career and will go on to run at a top tier university next fall. After a disappointing 2012 state meet is this the year for redemption?
5. Will Courtney Rogers add another Class 2 individual championship to bookend her high school career? – I’ll defer to the historians if this has been done before but it’s not often you see someone win a state championship in the freshman year and then again in their senior year without winning as a sophomore or junior.
6. Can a boys team whose top 4 runners are no older than a sophomore make it to the podium in Class 4? – The Section 1 Champs from Lafayette (Wildwood) are young but have been racing like upper- classmen all season.
7. In the “Just for fun race” will a Class 3 Girls team win? – The past few years we have combined the results of all classes into a hypothetical meet of if everyone had run together. Ste Genevieve has been ranked #1 for most of the season on the girls side and I’m curious to see how they would perform against all schools even if it’s something we can only do virtually.
8. Will there be any advantage to the teams that ran in the Capital City challenge in early October? – I’m not sure this is going to be easy to measure and analyze but I suspect it’s a topic that will be discussed.
9. What school will have the highest placed combination of girls/boys teams in their class? – There are a couple of schools whose boys and girls teams are both highly ranked such as Russellville in Class 1, Fatima in Class 2, Festus in Class 3 and Lafayette in Class 4.
10. How many guys will be sub 17 and girls sub 20? - In addition to changes in a course, weather conditions play a big role in how many runners will have great time. In 2010, 86 guys went sub 17 and 63 girls went sub 20 in all classes. With a favorable forecast for Saturday we could see 100 guys going sub 17.
Listen to the MoMileSplit.com State XC Preview Show