Boys Race Preview
Projected team scores
Top individual times
Entries
Flo50 teams: 21 Mount Tabor, 25 Broughton, bubble Trinity Prep
Flo50 individuals: 20 Jeremy Brown, bubble Kenny Kneisel, bubble Connor Lane
Top returning individuals: Brown, Brodey Hasty, Ethan Shuley, Kevin Murray, Eric Walz, Kneisel, Colin Schaefer, Ben Fogg, Tristan Colaizzi, Andrew Forsyth
This might be the most wide-open team battle in the country. As we wrote in our at-large team preview, Mt. Tabor and Broughton of North Carolina have the regular season résumés to be serious at-large candidates. But every other squad with hopes of making it to Portland--Florida's Trinity Prep, Maryland's Dulaney, Georgia's Marietta, Kentucky's St. Xavier, and Virginia's Lake Braddock--needs to qualify automatically.
Only really Mt. Tabor and Broughton have faced each other or done well against out-of-region competition; all the other contenders have dominated their state meets and are somewhat unknown coming into Saturday. St. Xavier won Kentucky by fifty points, Dulaney took Maryland by thirty-nine, Trinity Prep won their (small) class in Florida by forty-nine, Lake Braddock won Virginia by sixty, and Marietta won Georgia by fifty. For those schools, Saturday is going to be a very different meet.
Trinity Prep, Dulaney, Lake Braddock, Mt. Tabor, and Marietta have never cracked the top two at NXN Southeast, though Braddock was just a point out of second last year. St. Xavier won the region in 2012, while Broughton was second in 2008. If Broughton or Mt. Tabor cracks the top two, they'd be the first North Carolina squad to automatically qualify since then.
Three of the top individuals are on teams with a shot to qualify: Brown runs for Broughton, Kneisel for Tabor, Walz for Dulaney. Cardinal Gibbons's Lane, Steven Cross for Merritt Island, and Brentwood's Hastey are immune from the team race; if, say, Lake Braddock and Marietta qualify, those six are the favorites for the individual spots. If any two of Broughton, Tabor, and Dulaney qualify, that leaves one dark horse spot open. And it's cross country--assuredly, one to five dark horses not listed are going to break up the six mentioned above.
THE PICK: 1. Mount Tabor 2. Lake Braddock