Streaks of consecutive top 10 finishes at state

Newton's Third

Well-known member
Here is the 2021 list of current streaks of consecutive top 10 finishes at the state championship. I see it as another fun way to see long-term success of programs without a stutter in any given year. I do not claim this is the best way to gauge success but see it as “state” success rather than “regional” success of getting to state. This is just another way to hopefully generate interest and discussion in the sport.

26 of the state’s 60 top 10 finishing teams across all divisions were not top 10 in 2020. Last year had 28 newcomers to the consecutive top 10 list and just 20 in 2019. This means just shy of half the teams are new additions each of the past two years so there are some obvious year-in and year-out great programs in each division.

Although they were in the top 10 last year, Perrysburg, Marlington, and Minerva showed that you do not have to be a contender every year to field a strong championship team. Mason & East Canton showed that being in the hunt regularly makes getting over the top an extension. And then there is Minster. I hardly heard mention of them this year. Their top 3 state finishes and championships have become so routine that it is just expected and routine. They are clearly Ohio’s historical shining cross-country program.

Division 1 Boys active streaks of top 10 finishes Dublin Coffman=1, Lancaster=1, Massillon Jackson=1, Mentor=1, St. Edwards=1, Louisville=2, Mason=5, Hilliard Davidson=6, St. Xavier=13, St. Ignatius=15

Division 2 Boys active streaks of top 10 finishes Field=1, Lexington=1, Oakwood=1, Watterson=1, West Liberty Salem=1, Marlington=2, Mariemont=2, Carroll=3, Unioto=5, Woodridge=7

Division 3 Boys active streaks of top 10 finishes Black River=1, Botkins=1, Fort Loramie=1, Ottawa Hills=1, St. Paul=1, Holgate=2, Columbus Grove=2, South Range=2, East Canton=5, Mt. Gilead=6

Division 1 Girls active streaks of top 10 finishes
Loveland=1, Massillon Jackson=1, Rocky River=1, Stow Munroe Falls-1, Centerville=2, Shaker Heights=2, Perrysburg=2, Mason=4, Hilliard Davidson=5, Beavercreek=5

Division 2 Girls active streaks of top 10 finishes Revere=1, Salem=1, Tippecanoe=1, Waynesville=2, Minerva=2, Oakwood=3, Woodridge=3, Lexington=10, Granville=13, SVSM=14

Division 3 Girls active streaks of top 10 finishes Madeira=1, McDonald=1, St. Henry=1, Waynedale=1, Colonel Crawford=2, Liberty Center=4, Fort Loramie=5, West Liberty Salem=5, Gilmour Academy=12, Minster=22
 
 
As CC Freak asked, here is a list of current streaks of finishing top 10 at state for both genders, all divisions. I see it as just something else to show off the sport.
 
Woodridge Boys have been top ten 17 of their 18 consecutive state meet races. 10 state titles, 15 top 4. Average 3.17.

Woodridge Girls : Top 10 13 of their 17 consecutive sate meet races. 1 championship. Average 7.47

Combined, they nearly average top 5 over the last 17 years.

WOW, that was fun!
 
Last edited:
Doesn't it start to get boring?:)
When you have different kids each year, how can it get boring? These 3 kids didn't train over the summer as much as you would have liked. This kid is 4 inches taller than last season.

I really think what helps is taking things in steps. setting up all the kids to race meaningful invites and working towards winning the league. Then changing focus to the state championship. Some of the best seasons did not end in a state championship. There are seasons where doing well at the state meet is the goal and expectation from practice one. Other years it's peaking at District or Regional and hoping to hold on to perform well at the state meet. Can't do well there if you don't make it there. I can think of a couple of the lower state meet results that might have been as big an accomplishment for those kids as winning it for other kids. Also have to adapt to the team you have. I think that is one of Coach Howards biggest strengths. Every kid on the roster is important and if he has high mileage kids he can work with that, If kids come in and are low mileage, he works with that too, He's done well with teams with a lot of depth and just as well with teams that were only 5 deep. Also can look at the Division and prepare for the division and not worry about the other divisions. Knows when he has a team that can race against and challenge D1 teams at big invites and knows when he does not and races them accordingly. Is the team ready from the first meet and you are punching everyone in the mouth, or are you the tortiose?
 
It's impressive looking at these lists. Top 10 in the state, year after year for a decade plus is amazing. I know that schools like St. Ignatius and St. Xavier have a lot of things working in their favor that some of the rest of us don't, but still - in 15 years, you think there would be an untimely illness/injury, a fall at the start, a down year in terms of talent, or just a plain-old bad day. Very impressive.

And then I look and see that Minster has been in the top 10 in 22 straight meets, and I'm even more impressed - they don't have 1000+ kids (of one gender) in the school building to recruit like some of the big D1 schools do.

So many awesome programs, athletes, and coaches in our state.
 
A couple of variables most of these schools do have in common:

Upper middle class
Supportive communities
Large Schools for the D1. The most prominent schools in each suburban area are on this list. Cincinnati- Mason. Dayton- Beavercreek, Centerville. Columbus- Hilliard Davidson, Toledo- Perrysburg, Cleveland well Cleveland is and has been the odd duck in this equation for years at the D1 level. The real question is why does Cleveland stink at the cross country for the last 20 years? Outside of a few exceptions, this is the real question.

The smaller schools: Minster only offers volleyball, football, golf, and cross country. No soccer.

Woodridge offers soccer, but it's an anomaly because they are terrible at it. They won 2 games last year actually 2-14-1. This is usual for them- soccer sucks.
 
A couple of variables most of these schools do have in common:

Upper middle class
Supportive communities
Large Schools for the D1. The most prominent schools in each suburban area are on this list. Cincinnati- Mason. Dayton- Beavercreek, Centerville. Columbus- Hilliard Davidson, Toledo- Perrysburg, Cleveland well Cleveland is and has been the odd duck in this equation for years at the D1 level. The real question is why does Cleveland stink at the cross country for the last 20 years? Outside of a few exceptions, this is the real question.

The smaller schools: Minster only offers volleyball, football, golf, and cross country. No soccer.

Woodridge offers soccer, but it's an anomaly because they are terrible at it. They won 2 games last year actually 2-14-1. This is usual for them- soccer sucks.
Woodridge has had a couple of bad seasons in soccer. For many years they were tops in their league both boys and girls. it is not usual that the soccer team sucks. In fact, it dominated it's league for decades. It has had 2 or 3 down seasons.

You also don't know what you are talking about as far as Cleveland and CC. The top team on the list for D1 boys is St. Iggy. Plenty of meets up in the NE. Bring your team up and see for yourself.
 
Perrysburg girls and their 2 consecutive top 10 finishes is a shining example for the Toledo area, and then it is said that the Cleveland area has stunk over the last 20 years when St. Ignatius has the longest top 10 streak of any boys team on the list? St. Ignatius has also won 2 team titles in the past 20 years. Minus around 15 programs in Ohio, we should all hope to be so stinky.

Cleveland area schools won 5 consecutive girls DI team titles within the past 15 years thanks to Brecksville, Magnificat (3x), and Brunswick. Who knows how much longer Magnificat's success may have lasted if their administration hadn't caved to a few disgruntled parents who succeeded in having the brains behind the XC and track operation removed in the spring of 2013? Brunswick is definitely suburban Cleveland, but Medina County as whole is considered part of the Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area as are the peripheral counties of Lorain, Lake, and Geauga. Medina boys won a title in 2007. Solon boys brought a team title home to Cuyahoga County in 2016. Shaker Heights and Chagrin Falls girls have been good in recent years.

Summit County as a whole is not part of the Cleveland MSA, but there are communities in northern Summit County that might be considered Cleveland suburbs these days. Hudson is in that gray area alongside school districts like Twinsburg, Nordonia Hills, Revere, and Woodridge. It could go either way with regards to which city those communities' residents are more reliant on for employment, shopping, leisure, health care, etc. 20 years ago, I'd say those communities were more reliant on Akron, but with another generation of urban sprawl in the books, the quest for affordable housing plus upgrades to the local highways may have sent more Cleveland-centric people to those communities. Psycho_dad arguably knows that area better than anyone on this forum with regards to whether Hudson and Woodridge for that matter are more aligned with Akron or Cleveland.

There are not many smaller schools in the Cleveland area, but you missed Gilmour Academy's 12 straight top 10s on the girls' side, a few of which came while competing in Division II. Some of their success has come at the expense of Beaumont's domination achieved in the '90s and early '00s, but Beaumont is still competitive. Independence boys managed back-to-back team titles and a runner-up in the past 20 years.

On the list of all-time state meet team appearances, 3 of the top 7 boys teams are from the Cleveland area (Lakewood, Bay, and St. Ignatius).

To go as far as to say the Cleveland area stinks at cross country is not accurate, but one area of concern for the future is that many schools in the Cleveland area are losing enrollment. There's no great influx of new wealth and athletic talent like we've seen in the Columbus area or in the northern suburbs of Cincinnati.


As for some other items mentioned, there are many ways to be successful.

For smaller schools, it helps not to overextend your talent pool by offering too many sports (ex. no soccer at Minster). McDonald also doesn't play soccer, but they're seemingly always good at every sport they do offer. Maplewood plays soccer but no football. East Canton doesn't offer soccer. 49 years ago, the EC school board had a choice to add wrestling or go with some guy named Sternberg to start a cross country program. Sternberg said he could get cross country going for $100, and the rest is history. There might be a few folks in East Canton who are still waiting for that wrestling program to be established. Gilmour offers a rather full compliment of girls' sports, and they find success in all of them despite intense competition for students from rival Hawken and all-girl schools on the east side like Beaumont, Hathaway Brown, and Laurel. If needed, they find ways to share athletes with the other sports which is no small feat in this day and age where it seems like a variety of coaches want to build walls around their best players and monopolize their time all year round. The Gilmour boys' athletic programs have been more up and down over the years. I'd argue that my school which was once upon a time a small AAA, a solid DII, and now a mid-sized DIII school offers far too many sports relative to its enrollment, especially with regard to girls in the fall (volleyball, soccer, XC, tennis, golf, cheer (many of them play a fall sport), and band), and boys in the spring (lacrosse, tennis, baseball, track). Our athlete pool is overextended. Going from being a bigger school to a smaller school has made it difficult to get rid of any of these sports. Small schools that have always been small have an advantage in that they never had some of these sports in the first place.

I've always known Lexington as a fairly serious soccer school (knew a few kids on my college's team who played at LHS), yet they've been rather dominant in XC. St. V-M and CVCA also play some soccer and are generally above average, yet they've been successful in XC. I'll take Psycho_dad's word on Woodridge's soccer pedigree. He is more familiar with that program than many on here would think.

Then there are your big schools that have the numbers and talent pool to achieve success in a multitude of sports, presuming they get the kids out for all the sports. NW Ohio has a tough row to hoe in DI due to a lack of extremely large schools. From what I've gathered in the lengthy thread on the football boar regarding NW Ohio schools, Perrysburg is one of the few that is showing significant growth. Some on that thread are saying Perrysburg will eventually become the largest HS in NW Ohio.

I am of the belief that nearly every school has something that could work to its advantage to achieve success in XC. The challenge may lie in identifying what that something is and how to use it.
 
I am of the belief that nearly every school has something that could work to its advantage to achieve success in XC. The challenge may lie in identifying what that something is and how to use it.
Thus, going back to a previous conversation on a previous post, the success of the program whether D1, 2, or 3 is and always will be, the COACH.
 
I am of the belief that nearly every school has something that could work to its advantage to achieve success in XC. The challenge may lie in identifying what that something is and how to use it.
Thus, going back to a previous conversation on a previous post, the success of the program whether D1, 2, or 3 is and always will be, the COACH.
I was going to respond with exact same thing.

It takes the right coach that will get kids out and keep them out that is willing to make nearly a year around commitment that also know how to train them to preform at peak levels.
 
I am of the belief that nearly every school has something that could work to its advantage to achieve success in XC. The challenge may lie in identifying what that something is and how to use it.
Thus, going back to a previous conversation on a previous post, the success of the program whether D1, 2, or 3 is and always will be, the COACH.
Exactly. When our CC team was in its prime, most of the kids came from families with no background in track or CC. What we had was a coach that started the team from scratch and was able to convince kids to try a sport they knew nothing about. Then, once he got some bodies to work with he knew what to do with them. I’m convinced a coach like that could build a winning team in almost any school. Maybe not a top 10 team but a consistent regional qualifier. It’s all about the coach.
 
Exactly. When our CC team was in its prime, most of the kids came from families with no background in track or CC. What we had was a coach that started the team from scratch and was able to convince kids to try a sport they knew nothing about. Then, once he got some bodies to work with he knew what to do with them. I’m convinced a coach like that could build a winning team in almost any school. Maybe not a top 10 team but a consistent regional qualifier. It’s all about the coach.
I question this. It’s not all about the coach. I have seen quite a few elite teams change for the worse mainly because their demographic changed while the same coach was still there.
 
From 1999-2006, La Salle had a streak of eight consecutive top ten finishes at State which included four state runner-ups and two state chmpionships
 
I question this. It’s not all about the coach. I have seen quite a few elite teams change for the worse mainly because their demographic changed while the same coach was still there.
And we’ve all seen many, many perennial winners fade away after a coaching change when then demographics and other factors never changed.
 
Just saying you can't say it's all about the coach. Its a big factor but there are other factors as well.
It’s a theory. I would love to see one of the top coaches take a job in a school that is lacking all the “other factors” and prove my point. I totally believe it can be done. I doubt I’ll ever see it tho.
 
Here is the 2021 list of current streaks of consecutive top 10 finishes at the state championship. I see it as another fun way to see long-term success of programs without a stutter in any given year. I do not claim this is the best way to gauge success but see it as “state” success rather than “regional” success of getting to state. This is just another way to hopefully generate interest and discussion in the sport.

26 of the state’s 60 top 10 finishing teams across all divisions were not top 10 in 2020. Last year had 28 newcomers to the consecutive top 10 list and just 20 in 2019. This means just shy of half the teams are new additions each of the past two years so there are some obvious year-in and year-out great programs in each division.

Although they were in the top 10 last year, Perrysburg, Marlington, and Minerva showed that you do not have to be a contender every year to field a strong championship team. Mason & East Canton showed that being in the hunt regularly makes getting over the top an extension. And then there is Minster. I hardly heard mention of them this year. Their top 3 state finishes and championships have become so routine that it is just expected and routine. They are clearly Ohio’s historical shining cross-country program.

Division 1 Boys active streaks of top 10 finishes Dublin Coffman=1, Lancaster=1, Massillon Jackson=1, Mentor=1, St. Edwards=1, Louisville=2, Mason=5, Hilliard Davidson=6, St. Xavier=13, St. Ignatius=15

Division 2 Boys active streaks of top 10 finishes Field=1, Lexington=1, Oakwood=1, Watterson=1, West Liberty Salem=1, Marlington=2, Mariemont=2, Carroll=3, Unioto=5, Woodridge=7

Division 3 Boys active streaks of top 10 finishes Black River=1, Botkins=1, Fort Loramie=1, Ottawa Hills=1, St. Paul=1, Holgate=2, Columbus Grove=2, South Range=2, East Canton=5, Mt. Gilead=6

Division 1 Girls active streaks of top 10 finishes
Loveland=1, Massillon Jackson=1, Rocky River=1, Stow Munroe Falls-1, Centerville=2, Shaker Heights=2, Perrysburg=2, Mason=4, Hilliard Davidson=5, Beavercreek=5

Division 2 Girls active streaks of top 10 finishes Revere=1, Salem=1, Tippecanoe=1, Waynesville=2, Minerva=2, Oakwood=3, Woodridge=3, Lexington=10, Granville=13, SVSM=14

Division 3 Girls active streaks of top 10 finishes Madeira=1, McDonald=1, St. Henry=1, Waynedale=1, Colonel Crawford=2, Liberty Center=4, Fort Loramie=5, West Liberty Salem=5, Gilmour Academy=12, Minster=22
Do you really need to put the teams up there with one? It's technically not a streak until they've done it twice in my opinion.
 
Do you really need to put the teams up there with one? It's technically not a streak until they've done it twice in my opinion.

Like minds think alike. Notice that I did not say 'great minds'. I thought the very same thing.

However, if I put those with one on the list, it is much easier and a matter of 10 minutes to update both genders, all divisions, after the state meet. If I do not include those with one I would have to pull up the previous year's results and with my mind the chance for error increases dramatically.
 
I was in high school 100 years ago (late 80s), and we certainly couldn't match Ignatius' 15-year streak of top 10s. But it's amazing the innate confidence you run with when you stand on the shoulders of your predecessors' success. My school's run thru the 1980s of fifth, first, fifth, second, seventh, first, second, first, first created a situation where by the late 80s, we didn't hope to win ... we fully expected to win and demanded it of ourselves and each other. (I can only imagine how the guys at Caldwell felt). My own kids were recently HS athletes (not CC) for middling programs, and the clearest difference between my experience and theirs was not ability. It was that immense group confidence my team had, that we had won ... and knew how to win ... and would win again. I'm not sure there's any way to instill that in a group that's never felt it or grown into it on the shoulders of others. If I could bottle it, I would.
 
Top