Measuring the Best CC Programs of the NCRunners Era

Athletes like these three powered the best girls program of the last 7 year, whichever way you choose to look at it.

 

Through the All-Classes Pre-Season Rankings process, I have occasionally mentioned the top teams of the last 7 years (which I jokingly call "the NCRunners Era," because that's how long the site has been around).  Those rankings were determined by accumulated 5K times, or in other words by simply taking the top 7 runners over that period and scoring them as a team against all the other programs in the state.  However, in the last week MileSplit has released a new stat feature, which can be accessed from the XC Team Rankings option on the Stats page.  This new composite ranking takes into account track times from the previous season as well as returning cross country times, and it evaluates the returning 5K times for various splits (1-5 split, 1-4 split, etc.).  Teams are given points according to where they rank in the state in each category, and then the points are averaged to get the final value (lowest score is best, just like a cross country meet).  So, below are the top 10 programs over the last 7 years, using both methods of ranking them.