Following Week of Saturday, October 12
Week 5 rankings included huge action from the Manhattan, Burnt Hills, and Alden Bulldog invites along with a few other key meets such as the Rome Coughlin, Beaver River, and Byram Hill Bobcat. As always after the sprawling Manhattan meet, a lot of close judgment calls have to be made from the often contradictory standings coming from race results, class merges, and overall meet merges, but we've tried to make some sense out of the disorder.
Although there were no changes at the top of any class after the races that were highlighted by the Manhattan Eastern States and Burnt Hills III showdowns, there were a swirl of changes in the top 5. Saratoga and Shenendehowa remained locked in place behind ES winner Fayetteville-Manlius in A, East Aurora widened its lead in B, and C standout Greenwich matched up very well against the big teams at Manhattan. Liverpool, Cicero-North Syracuse, Shaker, Fairport, and Brighton were among the teams making big jumps in A, while Pearl River, Notre Dame and North Shore all had great Saturdays and big rewards in the B rankings.
In the week ahead we enter the time of big league and conference meets, a few stray county meets, and some prep-style invites as teams gear up for the post season qualifiers. Among the big meets this weekend are the Section 1 Coaches, Marathon, Albany County, Weedsport, Clarence, Chittenango, NYC XC Carnival and the out-of-state Brown Northeast invite.