Connecticut Boys XC Overall Preview



MileSplit CT is kicking off the previews of another XC season like no other with an in-depth series of articles that will continue through the month!

Following on a 2020-21 year for cross country that was shortened or missing entirely for teams in Connecticut, this year the outlook seems more promising for an extended schedule that will culminate with State Open and national championships. Still, at the beginning of September we are keeping our XC fingers crossed that all the sections and conferences can be restored to the traditional fall slate of action.

We begin coverage of this year's XC season with previews that will try to pull together the somewhat murky info from last year's XC meets along with more insights from the track season's long distance races and even from the estimates of who might be returning this year for a team that are based on 2019 XC results. So yes, this year we begin the XC campaign with a lot more questions than in past years. But we also hope to have a lot more race and interview videos, photo albums, and feature pieces to go along with the weekly rankings and wrap-ups that begin mid to late September.

An Invitation: We are making a commitment to cover all the schools in the state, which naturally includes the teams from the six classes (LL-L-MM-M-SS-S) of the CIAC. But we are also trying to give attention to teams from the other associations such as the Founders League, Fairchester Athletic Association (Fairfield+WestchesterNY, better known as FAA), and Housatonic Valley Athletic League. No matter which CT school you are running for, we'll be watching out for you. Please set up a MileSplit account for yourself if you do not own one and claim your athlete's profile if you are a runner or your team profile on CT MileSplit if you are a coach. Answers to any questions about MileSplit accounts can likely be found on the support pages. And teams are encouraged to tag MileSplitCT in your social media so we can share your exploits.

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The previews and rankings for the XC runners and teams will be using not only the raw times from the meets but also the speed ratings from the Tully Runners system that are becoming an ever more central part of XC coverage.  Speed ratings for XC runners are composed from comparing the times from individuals on a wide variety of courses under varying conditions and are much more informative than the "best time" lists from performances on widely ranging course types.  In 2020, however, few of CT's teams ran in meets that were were speed rated.

The previews for the CT boys start here with an overview of the top individual runners and teams overall, and they will continue with three more preview articles with special focus on each of the CIAC's six classes and the rest of the conferences. There are a group of teams from conferences like the ECC that we have little info on, so we are trying to provide very rough estimations from 2021 track and 2019 XC results for some of the traditional small school powers.

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A great season is  looming for the guys of CT, but accolades also need to be paid to last year's tremendous group of seniors who helped to really put CT running on the national map last year. Among those moving on are the Northeast XC and East Coast championships winner Nick Bendtsen of Wolcott who is at Princeton, Westhill's Colin McLaughlin who will be posting a 3:50 mile at Carnegie-Mellon if he continues the trend line of last year's incredible time-shrinking act, Conard's Tyler Remigino splits from the Sherry twins for the University of Virginia, Ridgefield's top duo of Charles Namiot and Charlie King head to Williams University and the University of Pennsylvania, Staples' Dillon Harding treks south to Loyola-Maryland, Wilton's Davis Cote goes north to Vermont, and Fairfield Prep's Azaan Dawson becomes all Hokie for Virginia Tech,


Check out the preseason previews below.


PREVIEW OF RUNNERS

PREVIEW OF Teams

Individuals

Teams