Kimi Cahoon figures to be leading a dangerous Phoenix Country Day contingent this fall.
Division 4 Girls
In 2019, Hopi finished seventh at state. That's not quite as much of an attention-grabber as the second-place finish by the boys, but it's still enough to get your attention. Despite Hopi not competing last year, the Bruin girls could be a team to keep on the back of your mind early in the season. If they can contend for a state title, we'll all know soon enough.
For now, however, we'll focus our attention on the teams for which we see more tangible recent evidence that they are in the 2021 title hunt. All the various girls' analyses corresponding to the ones linked in the boys' portion of the article are linked below:
RETURNING STATE MEET RESULTS - SCORE 5
RETURNING STATE MEET RESULTS - SCORE 4
RETURNING RUNNERS FROM 2020 - SCORE 5
3200 METER TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 4
3200 METER TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 3
1600 METER TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 5
1600 METER TIMES SCORED AS CROSS COUNTRY - SCORE 4
Either way you look at the results for returning runners from the state meet, you come to the same conclusion. Among those runners, it's a very tight race between Northland Preparatory and Glendale Prep. Benson comes in third in both analyses and figures as close enough to be a potential problem for both of the presumed favorites. Although the scoring is relatively tight, that's more an artifact of the small number of teams involved than of the actual proximity of times involved.
As we expand our vision to include times from the entire season, Valley Christian and Benson leapfrog Northland and Glendale Preps. Surely these standings mean something, but we should also note that we've given up the advantage of having times from the same day on the same course forming our analysis.
Kimi Cahoon of Phoenix Country Day and Madeline McBee of Glendale Prep are the only returning runners from this analysis with sub-20 times on their resumes. To their number, we'll add Jessica Madrid of Round Valley, who dropped just under 20 minutes at the state meet. Together with Madrid, McBee and Cahoon are the top three returners from last year's state meet.
So, it's difficult to pin down a clear team favorite from the lists of returning runners from 2020, either using only the state meet or taking the entire season into view.
We turn, then, to track results from this spring to see if they shed any additional light on the question.
With 3200 times, we drop down to score-4 and score-3 for this article. At Division 4, there just aren't that many schools running enough girls at 3200 meters to make for a very deep analysis unless we do. On top of that, a lot of the times we do see at 3200 meters aren't likely to be fast enough to qualify for varsity status in cross country this fall.
Pusch Ridge Christian, with Kyra Floyd leading the way, leaves the most memorable mark at score-4. At score-3, Phoenix Country Day leaves a nice--dare we say intimidating?--showing at 3200 meters. If PCD finds a way to augment their track three to a cross country five this year, they will be very difficult to beat. But, that's an undetermined "if" at this point.
Gilbert Classical is the only school that can put a full cross country score together on 1600 times. Ayla Young is the real deal in that group. The other times could conceivably translate into meaningful cross country times, but the sense offered is that we're better served by moving to the score-4 analysis for 1600 meters.
And there we do learn something worth knowing. Just as they did at 3200-meters-score-3, Phoenix Country Day dominates at 1600-meters-score-4. Kimi Cahoon, Anna Sabol, Ella Brenes, and Jenna Powell each posted sub-5:45 times in the 1600 this spring. Those times are bona fide competitive. If the Eagles can find one more at that level or close to it, and stay healthy through the season, they begin to look like serious favorites for the Division 4 cross country title this fall. They finished seventh last year, but there is strong upside potential for the team this year. The proverbial freshman phenom would be an enormous lift for this team.
At this point, however, we do not know whether or not PCD has a highly competitive #5 to finish off their scoring. So, while I'm inclined to tag them as the favorites for this fall, it must be acknowledged that we've leaned heavily on track results to make that conclusion stick and the deal is not sealed yet. It will be fascinating to see what we learn in the season's first few meets.