Texas Girls XC Team Rankings Week 5

Five ranked girls teams raced this weekend, and two of them went head-to-head. At the Byron Nelson Last Minute meet, Lucas Lovejoy beat Northwest Nelson 36-38. That puts Nelson into the top ten for the first time and moves Lovejoy up two spots. Southlake Carroll finished third in the top heat at Arkansas' Chile Pepper Festival and climbs to No. 2. Flower Mound raced in North Carolina, and Keller won the Reunion Run with its five scorers in the top seven.

With the state meet exactly one month away, we're starting to round to the point in the season where contenders become evident, and so do pretenders. Highland Park and Lovejoy are in 5A, so neither one will see the other eight teams in the postseason. In the 6A division, we see largely the same problem we did on the boys' side: five ranked teams and only four spots to qualify. Let's see how things shape up in this week's edition of our Girls XC Rankings.

No. 1

Dallas Highland Park

No. 1 Dallas Highland Park (Highland Park, TX) Prev. No. 1 - No change

Analysis: Highland Park has won its last two meets by 7 and 47 points. The 47-point win came at the Byron Nelson Invitational, where Northwest Nelson finished second. That's the same Nelson team that enters the rankings this week, which gives the Scots a direct result over a new top-ten team.

Adelaide Wortman (So.) and Ryan Sontag (Sr.) went 1-2 in 18:05.7 and 18:06.8. Finley Heckler (Jr.) was fifth and Paisley Bassett (Jr.) seventh. Freshman Orsella Hooks closed the scoring in 25th at 19:45.2. The 1:39.5 spread from first to fifth is wide, and Hooks' finish accounts for most of it.

Highland Park is in District 12-5A with Grapevine, Colleyville Heritage, and the Carrollton schools, which, given they're currently ranked first regardless of division, they will have no issue qualifying out of. The bigger question comes later in the 5A postseason, where Lovejoy is on the same path. Both teams already beat Nelson, Highland Park by 47 and Lovejoy by 2. 

No. 2

Carroll High School

No. 2 Carroll High School (Southlake, TX) Prev. No. 4 - Up 2

Analysis: Third out of 49 teams in Fayetteville is the kind of result Carroll had been missing. The Dragons scored 299 points in the El Caliente Heat 1 race, behind Bentonville (Ark.) at 182 and Blue Valley (Kan.) at 264, and ahead of Edmond North, Shawnee Mission East, and 44 other scoring teams. The race had 367 finishers.

Abigail Perez (Sr.) led in 24th at 17:54.8 and Grace McIlvain (Sr.) was 54th in 18:37.0. Then three runners finished within six seconds of each other: Landry Lambert (Sr.) in 19:01.2, Megan Bergman (Sr.) in 19:03.9, and Nora Farden (So.) in 19:07.1. The 1:12.3 spread is nearly the same as the 1:17.0 Carroll ran at Woodbridge, but this time the whole group placed higher, one again demonstrating that a good spread goes much further if it's higher up the field.

Carroll's postseason path is the hardest on this list. District 4-6A also has Keller and Northwest Nelson, so three ranked teams are competing for three spots before anyone gets to region. At this point in the season, Carroll doesn't need much to change. The 24-second gap between McIlvain and the Lambert group is where they can gain the most separation from the chasing pack. If Lambert's group moves up to McIlvain, Carroll becomes another degree harder to beat in the 6A division.

No. 3

Flower Mound

No. 3 Flower Mound (Flower Mound, TX) Prev. No. 2 - Down 1

Analysis: Liana Cluley-Garza has led Flower Mound from the front all season, and the Great American showed both how good she is and how much the team relies on her. The senior ran 17:47.7 and finished 18th in the Championship race in Cary, North Carolina, which had 317 finishers from programs up and down the East Coast and from California.

Eliana Rivera (Sr.) was 50th in 18:32.8, 45 seconds behind Cluley-Garza. Jewel Barnes (Jr.) was 60th and Allie Driscoll (Jr.) 85th. Megan Schmidt (Sr.) closed the scoring in 140th at 19:53.3. Flower Mound finished ninth of 41 with 289 points, and the 2:05.6 spread is the reason they fell a spot. The same gap after Cluley-Garza cost them the McNeil title to Highland Park in Week 3.

Their path to victory in District 5-6A should be smooth, but it's the competition for qualification and victory in Region 1 that poses a more difficult challenge. With Carroll, Keller, Nelson, and Eastwood also in the field, Flower Mound can't simply view this race as a box to check, regardless of their success from previous seasons or how they've performed so far this year.

No. 4

The Woodlands

No. 4 The Woodlands (The Woodlands, TX) Prev. No. 3 - Down 1

Analysis: The Woodlands drops a spot without racing. That's because of Carroll's result in Arkansas, not anything the Highlanders did. Their last race was a 22-point win over Vandegrift at the Nike South, with four scorers in the top 33 of a 204-runner field.

No. 5

Lucas Lovejoy

No. 5 Lucas Lovejoy (Lucas, TX) Prev. No. 7 - Up 2

Analysis: Lovejoy beat Northwest Nelson by two points, 36-38, in a very tight field, and it came down to the fourth and fifth runners. Coppell's Maya Easterwood won the race in 18:01.2. Emily Armstrong (So.) was second in 18:26.1, 4.7 seconds ahead of Nelson's Elena Sather. Lovejoy and Nelson then traded places through ninth.

The difference came after that. Lily Stabile (So.) and Talia Orshalick (Sr.) finished 13th and 14th, two-tenths of a second apart. Nelson's fifth runner was 19th. Leila Thomas (Jr.) was fourth and freshman Bronwyn Vaughan eighth. Lovejoy's spread from first to fifth was 43.4 seconds, the tightest of any ranked team this weekend. Add in last week's Cowboy Jamboree title, and that's two straight wins.

Lovejoy's path through the district and regional rounds is straightforward; they're the second-highest-ranked 5A team and are close behind Dallas Highland Park, who sit as the top-ranked team regardless of division. The two teams haven't raced each other yet, but Wortman and Sontag ran 18:05 and 18:06 at Byron Nelson, while Armstrong ran 18:26 on Saturday on a different course. Lovejoy's tight pack is how they make up that difference. 

No. 6

Bridgeland

No. 6 Bridgeland (Cypress, TX) Prev. No. 5 - Down 1

Analysis: Hope Smith has had a strong September with the Bridgeland senior winning the Lovejoy Fall Festival in 16:46.20, then placing third at Gans Creek in 17:14.2, behind only Providence Classical's Maggie Bishop and Bentonville's Flannery O'Daniel. These performances helped propel Bridgeland back into this conversation after an uncharacteristically rough start to the year by defending state champion standards.

At Gans Creek, Abigail Seale (Sr.) was 16th in 17:59.9. Freshman Zoe Jaswani, Brynlee Weston (Sr.), and Kate Garrison (Sr.) finished 36th, 40th, and 44th, 14 seconds apart. Bridgeland placed third out of more than 30 teams with 136 points, seven behind Bentonville and 20 behind Pella (Iowa). The drop to No. 6 is about Carroll and Lovejoy moving up, not a step back by Bridgeland.

No. 7

Keller

No. 7 Keller (Keller, TX) Prev. No. 6 - Down 1

Analysis: Sixteen points. In Decatur, Keller's top three finished 1-2-3. Sarah Darnell (Jr.) won in 17:59.5, freshman Emma Gibson was second in 18:23.2, and Julia Graves (Jr.) was third in 18:42.8. Katherine Wander (So.) was fifth and Yumi DeSaram (Sr.) seventh.

On a different course, Darnell ran 12.7 seconds faster than she did at McNeil, and Gibson was 24 seconds faster. The spread widened to 1:21.6 because the front of the lineup improved more than the back. The Reunion field isn't the Chile Pepper field, and that's why Keller drops a spot while Carroll moves up.

Keller's field at the District 4-6A meet matters more than just about any other district meet in the state. Carroll has proven to be a level ahead so far this year, and Northwest Nelson just lost to Lovejoy by only two points. Keller's top three should hold up against Nelson's. 

No. 8

Northwest Nelson

No. 8 Northwest Nelson (Trophy Club, TX) New

Analysis: A week ago, Nelson had the tightest pack at the Byron Nelson Invitational, a 33-second spread that took second place behind Highland Park. On Saturday, they added a frontrunner. Senior Elena Sather, who didn't run the previous weekend, was third overall in 18:30.8.

With Sather in front, the Nelson group that ran together in Week 4 moved up. Audrey Pavlicek (Jr.) was fifth in 18:50.3, Madison Benton (So.) seventh in 18:54.1, and freshman Cheryl Bor ninth in 18:58.4. All three ran 21 to 35 seconds faster than they did at Byron Nelson the week before. Kaylee Nelson (Jr.) was the fifth scorer in 19th at 19:30.8.

Nelson enters the rankings in the hardest spot in the state, the third of three ranked teams in District 4-6A. They'll get to regionals, but what happens from there becomes harder to predict and is largely contingent on what type of day the contenders have in Lubbock. 

No. 9

Austin Vandegrift

No. 9 Austin Vandegrift (Austin, TX) Prev. No. 8 - Down 1

Analysis: Vandegrift's second-place finish at the Nike South still looks good: 107 points, 52 ahead of third-place Austin Bowie. But Nelson's entry pushes them down a spot. Caroline Krupa was the best runner in that race among the ranked teams, finishing second in 17:52.9 and 2.4 seconds ahead of The Woodlands' Naomi Weller.

Freshman Joy Vladimirov was 15th in 18:34.2. Three sophomores filled out the scoring: Zofie Furmanek (37th), Kenley Fedor (48th), and Mary Troska (53rd), all within 22.1 seconds. That's a good pack. It just sits well behind Krupa, 1:44.2 back at the fifth runner.

This is a young team, with a freshman and three sophomores among the five scorers. While that means they lack championship experience when compared to the other teams on this list, that doesn't impact the quality they've shown throughout this season. 

No. 10

El Paso Eastwood

No. 10 El Paso Eastwood (El Paso, TX) Prev. No. 9 - Down 1

Analysis: Eastwood's top two can run with anyone on this list. Kylie Vega (So.) was fifth in the Desert Twilight Sweepstakes in 17:44.6, and Carlee Caraveo (Jr.) was 14th in 18:01.8. Both runners placed among the leaders in a field with programs from Colorado, California, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona.

That result also matters for district. El Paso Franklin, in District 1-6A with Eastwood, finished 10th in the same race with 335 points, close enough to watch. Region I is harder. Eastwood is one of five ranked teams there competing for four state spots.