Week 1 Class 2A Boys Team Top 10: Florida Cross Country Rankings

Florida Class 2A boys cross country team rankings, after opening weekend: August 21-22, 2026

Bolles put its whole varsity in the Cecil Field Elite race, the deepest boys field in Florida, and came out of it with a fifty-six-second spread and seven runners inside the first twenty-five of Class 2A. They score 45 points in a class where only one other team broke 200.

They did it with Aaron Ches on the DNF line. Ches ran 16:26.1 at the 2025 state meet, twelfth in 2A, and the Cecil results list him at Bolles rather than at Episcopal, where our returner file has him. If that is what it looks like, Bolles opened at 45 points without their best returning runner in the count at all.

Behind them the class is a waiting room. Half of this top ten never pinned on a number — five of the ten are ranked on what they ran last November, including the No. 2 team, which entered nobody anywhere, not even a junior varsity squad.

As always this is data plus judgment, and we will miss somebody along the way. A (P) beside a team means it did not put five runners on a line this weekend and is entered on what its returners ran last November. How we sorted it all out is at the bottom for anyone who wants it. Races are not won until the kids have run. Enjoy.

The statewide lists: Week 1 boys team top 10 and Week 1 boys top 10. The 2A individuals are here. The other class team lists: 1A boys, 3A boys, 4A boys and 2A girls.

---

1. Bolles — 45 points

Cecil Field, Elite race. Five-man average 16:37.6, spread 0:56.0, finishing 2-5-8-12-18 in the class. Brantley Rigdon 16:04, Aidan Chandler 16:28, Armaan Sharma 16:44, Wyatt Cleek 16:52, Vincent Barragan 17:00, then Luke Meiners 17:05 and Henry Camp 17:18 at 21st and 25th.

Nobody in this class is close to that. Only three 2A runners in the state finished ahead of Bolles's second man — Pensacola Catholic's Frederick Gunther, McKeel's Aidan Alam and Gulliver's Adrian Iziliaev — and two of the three did not do it in the same race.

Then the part that should worry the rest of 2A. Aaron Ches did not finish. His 16:26.1 is the seventh-fastest returning mark in the class and our No. 9 individual in 2A, and he was in a Bolles bib. Bolles is fourth in Florida across all classes and the only 2A team on the statewide board that got there by racing.

2. Gulliver Prep (Pinecrest) — 80 points — (P)

Adrian Iziliaev 16:24.5, Emilio Perez-Garcia 16:44.1, Tyler Keating 16:54.4, Christopher Arana 17:09.2, Nicolas Altaba 17:30.8, with Aston Conrad 17:32.5 as a sixth. Projected average 16:56.6, spread 1:06.3.

Gulliver did not enter a meet. Not the boys, not a JV squad, nobody. They are second in the class and eighth in Florida entirely on what five of them ran last November, and three of those five carry top-fifteen returning marks in 2A.

Be blunt about what the number says and does not say. Eighty points against Bolles's 45 means Gulliver, running exactly to last November's form, loses this race by thirty-five. Gulliver almost certainly is not running to last November's form. Nobody in the state has less to show for a strong ranking and nobody has more upside sitting unmeasured.

3. Dunedin — 189 points

Jim Ryun, at Holloway Park. Converted average 17:38.8, spread 1:54.4, finishing 11-23-37-40-78. Jeffery Tanner Turley came back at 16:50.2, eleventh in the class. Braden Workman, Owen Kalshoven and William Vricos follow, and then a fifty-six-second hole to Carson Bews.

The best raced result in 2A behind Bolles, and it came on the course outside Cecil Field we trust most. Four runners inside the first forty and a fifth at 78 is the whole story: Dunedin's front is legitimate and its fifth man is nearly two minutes back. Close that and the Falcons are arguing with Gulliver instead of trailing them by 109.

4. Calvary Christian (Clearwater) — 205 points

Cecil Field, Elite race. Average 17:43.0, spread 2:01.0. Luke LaHaye 16:53, Maximus Brown 17:14, Logan Milo 17:36, Cooper Dixon 17:58, and then a fifty-six-second gap to Connor Wichmann 18:54 — with Tucker Magnotta 18:54 and Gavin Faw 18:56 dead level beside him.

Calvary's fifth, sixth and seventh finished within two seconds of each other. That is a pack. It just starts a minute too late.

Note the school. There are three separate Calvary Christians in this weekend's results — Clearwater, Fort Walton and Fort Lauderdale — and they had to be pulled apart by hand before any of these numbers meant anything. See the notes.

5. Wolfson — 250 points

Cecil Field. Average 18:02.4, spread 1:16.0, finishing 32-33-43-59-83. Joseph Barry and Ryan Robinson crossed together at 17:34 and 17:35, Nathan Kilgore 17:53, Joseph Morgenthal 18:20, Rian Naik 18:50, with Harper Galke 18:51 sixth.

Of the five teams in this top ten that actually raced, Wolfson has the third-tightest one-through-five and the only one with nobody inside the class top thirty. That is a specific kind of team: it cannot win a race on talent and it will not lose one on a bad fifth man.

6. Cocoa Beach — 268 points — (P)

Elijah Daly 17:02.8, Lars Manning 17:41.6, Asher Cerveny 18:16.5, Jackson Daly 18:40.5, Isaak Starr 18:48.4, and a sixth in Reagan Reyes 19:25.3. Projected average 18:06.0, spread 1:45.6.

Six returning marks, no seventh, no race. A team with exactly six eligible bodies on projection is one injury away from not scoring at all.

7. Berkeley Prep (Tampa) — 272 points — (P)

Cole Galuski 16:28.9, Rai Mehta 17:52.1, Adrian Nel 18:19.5, Colin Maloney 18:37.8, Brooks Rankin 19:06.0. Projected average 18:04.9, spread 2:37.1, finishing 6-42-58-70-96.

Galuski is sixth in the class and our No. 10 individual in 2A, and then Berkeley falls off a cliff. A 2:37 spread on a projection is worth sitting with, because a projection is the friendliest possible version of a team — everybody is entered at their best day of last season. Four points behind Cocoa Beach with a runner thirty-four seconds better than anyone Cocoa Beach has is the arithmetic of a top-heavy roster.

8. McKeel (Lakeland) — 288 points — (P)

Aidan Alam 16:18.4, Cal Howard 16:56.0, Nolan O'Steen 18:00.4, Andrew McKnight 19:24.9, Nico Burke 19:26.4. Projected average 18:01.2, spread 3:08.0, finishing 3-16-47-110-112.

The best one-two in the class after Bolles and the worst three-through-five in the top ten. Alam is third in 2A and our No. 4 individual, a rising sophomore off a 16:17.8 state run as a freshman, and Howard backs him at sixteenth. Then it collapses.

McKeel has the lowest five-man average of any team ranked sixth through tenth and it still scores 288, because two runners in the first sixteen do not outrun two runners past 110. The Wildcats did not enter a meet, so there is no evidence either way about whether their four and five moved this summer. It is the most leveraged unknown in the class.

9. Episcopal — 290 points

Cecil Field. Average 18:15.8, spread 1:07.0, finishing 35-36-66-74-79. Grayson Smith and Rick Schultz both 17:39, Dylan Patterson 18:34, William Bunch 18:41, Chase Fallucco 18:46, with Joshua Oche level at 18:46 and Teddy Formoso 19:10.

A 1:07 spread and five of the first seventy-nine, on the anchor course, with nothing borrowed and nothing projected. Two points behind McKeel with a front end three minutes worse — the same argument Wolfson makes, four ranks higher.

10. American Heritage (Delray Beach) — 325 points — (P)

Anthony Barajas 18:14.2, Tyler Schiff 18:19.4, Thomas Kennedy 18:20.9, Dean Sincavage 18:37.7, Cenex Fleurigene, Jr. 18:53.1. Projected average 18:29.1, spread 0:38.9.

The tightest five in this class by seventeen seconds over anybody. Nobody inside the top fifty of 2A and nobody outside the top eighty-five either.

This entry was wrong until we caught it and it is worth saying why. American Heritage (Delray Beach) and American Heritage (Plantation) are different schools in different classes, 2A and 3A, and the ranking code was merging them, which put Plantation's Brandon Koch into Delray Beach's scoring five. He is out, Fleurigene is in, the average moved by two seconds and the rank did not move at all. The number is now the right team's number.

The sixth man is Jett Altier at 22:04.2. There is no depth here. If one of the five is hurt, this team is out of the top twenty.

---

Just missed

11. Lake Highland Prep, 359 — Cecil Field, 18:34.4 average. Santiago Salazar 17:26 leads and the next four run 18:25 to 19:14. Raced, and thirty-four points from tenth.

12. Suwannee, 366 — Cecil Field, 18:37.4, and a 0:56 spread to match Bolles's, Daniel Stoltzfoos 18:06 through Jonah Lord 19:02, all five inside the first ninety-three. The catch: Logan Haley, eleventh in 2A at state in 16:24.4 and our No. 7 individual in the class, did not run while ten of his teammates did. Suwannee is ranked on a squad missing the best runner in the program.

13. Kings Academy (West Palm Beach), 373 (P). 14. West Shore, 401 — Cecil Field. 15. Eastside, 404 — Cecil Field, with Luke Engels 16:33 seventh in the class and a 3:17 spread behind him. 16. Pensacola Catholic, 412 — and the caveat below.

Not ranked, and worth saying why

Montverde Academy cannot be on this list. Will Moss is the defending 2A state champion and the No. 1 individual in the class, and Montverde has exactly two returners with 2025 state times. Five are required to project a team, and the Eagles did not race, so there is nothing to score and no way to enter them. That is a hole in the class picture, not a ranking of Montverde.

Geneva Classical Academy ran an 18:10.1 five-man average at Cecil Field, which would be ninth in this class on average alone, and it does not appear in FHSAA's cross country classification documents at all. It is not in this ranking and that is a limitation of the ranking, not a judgment on the team.

---

How we ranked them

• Courses do not all run the same speed, so we do not compare raw times. Cecil Field is the yardstick. For the other meets we look at boys who raced both that course and last year's state meet, and use the gap to work out what a time was worth.
• Then every 2A team in Florida goes into one virtual race, scored the normal way: five count, six and seven displace, five finishers required, low score wins. This is a 2A-only field, so the point totals do not compare to the statewide list — only the order does.
• Thirty-one 2A teams cleared the bar. Seven are entered on projection and marked (P), and five of those seven are in this top ten. On the boys' side August and November times run about even, so a projected 2A team is entered at almost exactly what it ran last November — no summer credit, no incoming freshman, nothing.
• One name in the scoring needs a flag. Frederick Gunther of Pensacola Catholic scores as the first individual in this virtual race, because the ranker still carries a big correction for the Pine Forest course. Our 2A individual list threw that correction out — it rests on a handful of athletes whose results disagree by minutes, four of them from one school and one of them Gunther — and ranked him third instead. He costs Bolles exactly one point either way and Pensacola Catholic sits sixteenth, so it changes no order above. It is still the softest number on the page.
• Three schools were sharing one roster. The ranker keys schools by name, which turned Calvary Christian of Clearwater, Fort Walton and Fort Lauderdale into a single team and merged the two American Heritages across a class boundary. Fixed with a curated list of the schools that collide, never a fuzzy match — a fuzzy match has previously merged Sarasota with Sarasota Military Academy.
• Aliased schools were falling out of their own class. A school's class is stored under its returner-file name and its results arrive under a different one — “Belen Jesuit (Miami)” against “Belen Jesuit Prep.” The alias linked the results but not the class, so every aliased school was silently dropped from its class ranking, including the No. 1 team in Florida. Fixed.
• Class is the 2026-27 FHSAA classification. A school only appears in our returner data if it has a returning runner from the 2025 state meet, so a program that missed state or whose one qualifier graduated is invisible to us until we place it by hand from the FHSAA document. Newly placed that way: Cardinal Mooney 2A, Seminole (Sanford) 3A, and a run of 4A and 1A schools. None of them enters this top ten.
• Georgia and Tennessee runners at Cecil Field are left out.

Week 2 is when Gulliver, McKeel and Berkeley Prep have to show something. Check back for the updated top ten, and the full opening weekend recap with all eleven meets is right here.