If there's reason to believe Salpointe Catholic can be beaten, it likely begins with Nate Pestka.
2021 Arizona Division 3 Boys Cross Country
One way, and perhaps conceptually the first way, of looking at results from one year and projecting to the next year is to take the state meet results from last year, exclude seniors who have graduated, and score the results of the remaining runners from the state meet. There's an inherent problem with this in that it doesn't allow teams to "replace" their seniors, but it does have the advantage of all runners included have times from the same course on the same day. It doesn't tell us everything, but it does tell us something. We'll do this two ways, once with scoring five per team and once with scoring four per team (so as to include teams with three seniors at last year's state meet).
Here's what we get when we do that with last year's Division 3 Boys state meet results:
RETURNING STATE MEET RESULTS - SCORE 5
RETURNING STATE MEET RESULTS - SCORE 4
You can readily see, on either analysis, that Salpointe Catholic is running well ahead of the field. Snowflake relied heavily on seniors at last year's state meet and, as a result, they do not show on either of these analyses. Page comes into view on the score-4 analysis, but they, too, will have a good number of state seniors to replace.
Shadow Mountain, which ran a team of six sophomores and a junior at state last year, looks like a bona fide contender if these guys can make something like the usual year-to-year progressions. But, year-to-year progressions apply for Salpointe Catholic as well, and the Lancers should return six of their state seven this fall.
One of the reasons Salpointe does so well on this analysis is that the Lancers boast four of the top eight returning runners from last year's state meet--Diego Veliz, Michael Urbanski, Diego Logan-Behshad, and John Harris. No matter what game you're playing, that's a tough hand to match.
We can, of course, expand our selection to include times from all meets last fall. We do this at the expense of getting times for each runner from the same course on the same day, but it does give us a much more realistic picture of the number of runners each team has coming back. On the assumption that all of this fall's contending teams should have at least five runners coming back this fall, we can skip the score-4 analysis in this case:
RETURNING RUNNERS FROM 2020 - SCORE 5
Salpointe Catholic impresses in this analysis as well. The Lancers bring back five guys who ran a sub-17 time from at least one point during the season last fall. And the next two aren't far at all from 17 minutes. Owing to the larger number of teams involved in the analysis, Shadow Mountain appears farther back than they were in the first analysis, but the Matadors, a distant fourth at last year's state meet, still come in a solid second. Two P schools from points northward (for most of Arizona)--Prescott and Page--battle it out for third.
In our next analysis, we dispense with cross country results from last fall in the interest of getting more recent results from this spring. First, we'll apply cross country scoring the 3200 times from this spring. We'll do that with both score-5 and score-4 because not all track teams run a lot of different athletes in the 3200. We should also mention that this analysis runs the risk of missing athletes who didn't run track--or weren't distance athletes in track--for one reason or another. Still, every piece of data you gather tells you something.
3200 TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 5
3200 TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 4
Either way you look at it, it's hard to miss that Salpointe is clearly on top of the pile. Although Page and Shadow Mountain don't show up on the score-5 analysis for 3200 meters, they do make a case as the top two threats to Salpointe in the score-4 analysis. And, we'll take a moment here to note that Shadow Mountain relies heavily on the Pestka family in this analysis. That's Nathan Pestka (9:32), Colton Pestka (10:39), and Austin Pestka (11:19).
We can, of course, use the same analysis to score 1600 times. 1600 meters is a bit farther from cross country distances than 3200 meters, but we tend to get a more complete cross section of runners at 1600 meters.
1600 TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 5
At this point, you're probably not surprised to learn that, once again, Salpointe wins the battle of the analysis. Shadow Mountain is as close here as they've been in any of the analyses, but they're still playing a serious game of catch-up.
As an aside, Diego Veliz did not run track for Salpointe Catholic this spring. I'm not certain what, if anything, that means for Veliz, but if he's back for cross country this fall, then Salpointe figures to be even more dominating than the track analyses suggest.
None of these analyses include incoming freshmen, of course, but most boys teams won't have an incoming freshman who can step in and large difference at the state meet.
Now that we've run the gamut of handy analyses, it's time to discuss a little what those analyses have told us.
First and foremost, they tell us that Salpointe Catholic counts as a formidable favorite headed into this fall's cross country season. Formidable favorites don't always win, but the Lancers come in with a considerable advantage on paper (and they likely own space in the heads of some of their competition as well).
Track results from this spring suggest that Shadow Mountain's Nate Pestka probably counts as the individual favorite headed into the fall. That's a step up from where Pestka finished last fall's state cross country meet, but the Matadors will still need a few more such steps up to effectively challenge Salpointe Catholic.
Page seemingly always ends up better on the course than they appear on paper. Anyone counting the Sand Devils out at this stage is lacking some experience with the ways of Arizona high school cross country. The top-end talent that pushed Page to a close third last year, however, is gone. Quentin Davis is the top returner from last year's state meet, but Davis didn't run track this spring, so there are questions remaining to be answered about how Page's scoring five will shape up this fall.
Snowflake has some returning talent, chiefly in the forms of Caleb Anson and Trey Flake, but it still figures to be a rebuilding year for the Lobos. The pack has been thinned out considerably from last fall and it will likely take some time for the power of the pack to find itself anew.
The top returning runner from state cross country last fall, Lisandro McCarter of Prescott, had only an abbreviated track season this spring. An injury would provide one possible explanation for that. So far as we know, McCarter will be back this fall, carrying a large portion of Prescott's hopes with him. Prescott had some solid track results this spring and could figure as a dark horse contender with McCarter back in the fold.