5 Fun Stats About Last Season

Going By The Numbers

I've been a baseball fan most of my life.  More than other major sports, baseball was willing to dive deep into statistics and analytics, and I'm a math teacher.  That probably says enough, but I think statistics also offer a bridge to the past, and as a history nerd I also loved looking at how the greats from the 1940s stacked up with today.  

Running can offer similar opportunities to crunch numbers and examine the past.  I try to do this throughout the season in our race previews and recaps, but I wanted to offer a big-picture version in this post that follows an in-depth analysis of our season. It is important to realize that numbers can only say so much without the risk of comparing apples to oranges.  They can also be manipulated, as summarized in the popular Mark Twain saying that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  However, numbers are better than nothing, and offer a fun way to explore our team history. 

​So without any more delay, here are five fun statistics about last season going by the numbers.   

#1:  Our Girls Showed Incredible Improvement

Our seven returning girls improved by an average of 72 seconds over last year.

Our girls went from 5th in the district to 5th in the state in the course of one year, so it's pretty clear the team improved.  Dwindling rosters on other schools and Anna's success as a freshman fueled some of that, but the returning ladies on our team also showed an impressive amount of progress.

I went through the history of our program to look at one-year improvements of girls by comparing the season best in one season to their season best the following season.  As you can see in the table below, there have been nine occasions where a girl from our program has improved by more than a minute in one season.  Four of those (Audrey, Reagan, Sybina, Reese) happened in 2024.

Above is every time in team history a girl has improved by more than one minute compared to the previous season.

The common narrative in our sport is that girls run their fastest as freshman and only get slower from there.  While progress is rarely linear and can take many turns, our girls literally ran in the face of that claim.  This is  largely a testament to the work our ladies put in, especially over the summer months.  They bought into their training and the belief that they could get better, and the numbers show it!

Not only was Audrey's improvement the greatest on our team, it ranked 32nd among all girls in the state who ran at least four 5Ks in both 2023 and 2024.

#2:  Ethan Got a Lot Better Over His Career

Just as important as one-year improvement is career progress.  We've seen some boys make some impressive strides during their years on the team.  Ethan certainly fit that description this year, especially after his breakout at districts.  I decided to see how he stacked up within our program by looking at how every runner's freshman season best compared to his senior season best. 

A couple disclaimers here.  First, a runner obviously had to be on the team as both a freshman and a senior, meaning athletes who left the team or didn't join until sophomore year didn't qualify.  It's also worth noting that a few runners (like Ethan's brother Isaac) actually ran their fastest race as a junior.  I still went with senior personal bests, but I can understand those who might feel cheated.

Nonetheless, below are the top 10 boys by career improvement:

One thing I noticed is how some of the names of the list are among the most successful in our program, while a few never scored in a varsity race.  As you can see, Ethan's improvement ranked him second in program history behind Brett Lottes.  While it was hard to predict exactly which race Ethan would crush, what was constant was his willingness not to set limits on himself and to keep showing up to put in the work for improvement.

Brett Lottes holds the top spot in career improvement for our boys program. Like Ethan, he became a key contributor, including being our seventh runner at the state meet in 2014 when we lost the state title by a tiebreaker.

#3:  Our Front Three Girls Were  Dangerous

By the end of the season, Abby, Reagan, and Anna were all on the all-time top 10 list for our program.

A team with a strong top three is hard to beat.  I do remember watching Summit Prep take second at state in 2015 despite having the first three girls across the finish line, so it does take a full team to win.  However, with three quality runners setting the pace, a team is a long way toward success.  

This year we had three girls--Reagan, Anna, and Abby--earn all-district honors.  This has happened many times in program history, including 2019 where we were one place away from having all five scorers qualify individually for state.  That made me wonder how this year's top three stacked up against some of those historic groups.  And so I looked at the season bests of the top three girls on our program year by year and calculated their average time.  The top five are below:

It didn't surprise me at all to see the 2017 team at the top of the list.  That team was incredibly deep with talent and was stacked up front, boasting three of the top five girls in program history.  Corin Carroll and Abby Buchheit were building on a successful junior season in 2016 (#2 in the rankings) and were joined by freshman phenom Genevieve Lipe, who effectively took her sister's spot as the third fastest runner on the team.  Had they been running in Class 1 instead of in Class 2 with strong district rival Jefferson and an absolute dynasty team like Fatima, this is a squad that definitely would have been on the podium at state.  

To see our 2024 trio right behind those years says a lot about their success and perseverance.  We will definitely miss Abby's leadership and consistency, but perhaps our 2025 squad can build on the previous year's success like the 2017 crew did!

During the 2017 season, Abby, Corin, and Genevieve all ran 22:00 or better, a feat only accomplished by two other runners in the entire history of our girls program.

#4:  Our Freshman Boys Bring a Ton of Depth

Going into the last off-season, I knew we needed to find some boys.  We had finished the season with only six runners (two of whom were seniors), and at that point questions still lingered regarding Noah H.'s health.  That left us with only four boys, and while Noah H. was ultimately given the green light to run, we also lost Jake Layton.  Recruiting additional boys for the team became a top priority.  

My initial hope was to maybe find two new boys so that we could feel confident about having a scoring team.  To my surprise, we ended up with four freshman to start the summer, and when Cain joined on after the start of school, that number jumped to five.  I couldn't think of many years when our program had this many freshman boys, and so I decided to do some digging.

It turns out that we've ended up with five boys in a single class by senior year on a few occasions (the classes of 2018 and 2023 for example).  But in only one other season did we start out with five freshman boys.  The 2017 season actually had six freshmen from the Class of 2021.  That included Jack Baer and Kyle Steinbecker--#2 and #3 on the all-time freshman list for our program--as well as plenty of depth behind, so it isn't surprising to see the average of their top five come in just north of 20 minutes.  

While this year's freshmen didn't quite reach those same heights, a 22:10 average is nothing to discount.  In fact, it was the third best five-freshmen average among all teams that will race in Class 1 next year.  In the end, two of the 2017 freshmen didn't remain on the team all four years.  If our freshmen this year can stick with it, I have no doubt they can find an incredible amount of success in the future!

All five of the freshmen in this photo would go on to break 20 minutes in the 5K, with four of them going sub 19. No other graduating class has had more than two athletes run in the 18s.

#5: Carter Is In Rare Territory

Our program has been blessed with many talented runners who have earned all-state honors, a few of them on multiple occasions.  I compiled a list of all of these athletes along with the number of all-state honors they earned.

In the end, Corin Carroll is the only three-time all-state runner from our program.  Beyond that, we've had five runners earn all-state honors twice.  

However, Carter is the only runner in our program history to earn all-state honors as a freshman and therefore the only one of those five to have two all-state honors through sophomore year.  That sets him up to be not only the first boy to earn all-state honors three times, but potentially the first runner in our program to do so all four years.  

Beyond that, he was the fastest freshman in his grade at the state meet both his freshman and sophomore year.  Unfortunately he likely won't get the chance to be the first boy in Class 2 in the MileSplit era (back to 2006) to stretch that accomplishment through junior year.  But even if a move to Class 1 happens, I don't seen any reason that diminishes his bright future or potential for some legitimate success!

Corin didn't join cross country until her sophomore year and earned all-state honors in each of her three seasons on the team.