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

Update: the week 2 edition of this ranking is now up, with everything the second weekend of racing changed.

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

Seven of these ten did not race. Four programs holding a top fifteen returning mark in the class kept their whole squad in the garage, and one of them, Montverde Academy, did not enter a single runner at any of the eleven meets, boys or girls, varsity or JV.

So the two best stories in 2A came from boys nobody had on a list. A Bolles junior who does not appear in the returner data at all ran 16:04 in the deepest field in Florida and beat every returner his own school had. And a Pensacola Catholic sophomore won a meet by forty seconds on a course we cannot convert no matter how hard we try.

As always, this is data plus judgment, and we will miss somebody along the way. A (P) next to a name means that runner has not opened yet and we are going on last November. How we sorted everybody out is at the bottom. Races are not won until the kids have run. Enjoy.

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

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1. Will Moss, Montverde Academy, Sr. — (P)

The 2A state champion, back for a senior year, and the biggest margin on this board. Moss won 2A in 15:35.3, 42.5 seconds clear of the next returning boy in the class. Montverde did not enter a meet this weekend. Not the boys, not the girls, not a JV squad, not anywhere.

He is still first by 28 seconds over the fastest mark anybody in this class ran on a course we can trust, and the two runners below him would both need a big jump just to make it a race. This is the rare projection nobody is going to argue with.

2. Brantley Rigdon, Bolles, Jr.

The name that was not in any file two weeks ago. Rigdon has no 2025 state appearance. He is not in the returner data at all, at Bolles or anywhere else. He finished 19th in the Cecil Field Elite race in 16:04.0, in the deepest boys field in Florida, ahead of Bolles's entire returning top four.

That is the fastest 2A mark of the weekend on the yardstick course, with no adjusting and none needed. He beat Armaan Sharma, the fourth-fastest returner in the class, by 40 seconds. He beat Aidan Chandler by 24. Whatever he was doing last November, whether that was a transfer, an injury or a year on the JV, he is now the fastest 2A boy who has actually run in 2026 and it is not close.

He is ranked second off one race, which is one more race than anybody else in this class has managed. Bolles is first in 2A and fourth in Florida, and Rigdon is the reason that number is not lower.

3. Frederick Gunther, Pensacola Catholic, So.

The most interesting result of the weekend, and the one we cannot price. Gunther was 56th in 2A at state in 17:21.8 as a freshman. He opened by winning the Pine Forest Invitational in 16:57.2, 39.8 seconds clear of Braeden Hunt of Gulf Breeze and 89 seconds clear of third.

Take the usual course adjustment at face value and he becomes a 15:55 runner and the second-best boy in this class. Do not take it at face value. Pine Forest is built on five runners who disagree with each other by nearly three minutes, three of them are Gunther's own teammates, and one of them is Gunther, which means the correction we would apply to him is partly built from his own race. Leave him out and the rest put his mark anywhere from 16:25 to 15:45. That is not a measurement. It is a range wide enough to move him from tenth to second.

Here is what survives with no arithmetic at all. He ran 24.6 seconds faster than his state time on a course that cost Braeden Hunt a full minute and Mason Pohovey half of one. Against the four runners in that race we can compare to November, he gained between a minute and nearly three minutes on every one of them. And he won by forty seconds.

That is worth third. It is not yet worth second over a 16:04 that needs no explaining. Pensacola Catholic's next finisher was Pohovey at 19:12, and 38 boys finished the whole race. Gunther needs a real field, and Pine Forest was not one.

4. Aidan Alam, McKeel (Lakeland), So. — (P)

Fifth in 2A at state in 16:17.8 as a freshman, the second-fastest returning mark in the class, and no opener. McKeel did not enter either day.

A freshman running 16:17.8 at the state meet is the best improvement profile on this whole board, and there is no way to collect on it from the sideline. He has the strongest claim of any unraced runner below Moss and nothing new to show for it.

5. Michael Gomez, FAU (Boca Raton), Sr. — (P)

Sixth in 2A at state in 16:18.6, eight tenths of a second behind Alam, and also unraced. Two runners separated by less than a second, neither of whom has been tested, which makes the order between them close to arbitrary and the pair of them a real problem for everybody underneath.

6. Adrian Iziliaev, Gulliver Prep (Pinecrest), Sr. — (P)

Tenth in 2A at state in 16:23.9. Gulliver Prep is second in 2A and eighth in Florida on its returners and did not race a soul, which is a lot of ranking built on last November. Iziliaev, Emilio Perez-Garcia and Tyler Keating hold three of the top fifteen returning marks in this class and not one of them has opened.

7. Logan Haley, Suwannee (Live Oak), Jr. — (P)

Eleventh in 2A at state in 16:24.4, and this projection comes with an asterisk of its own, because Suwannee raced. The Bulldogs put six boys in the Cecil Field B race and four more in the C race. Haley was not among them.

His teammates ran and he did not, which is different from a program staying home and usually means something. Until we know what, he sits on his November number.

8. Aidan Chandler, Bolles, Sr.

Twenty-second in 2A at state in 16:46.1, and one of only three boys in this ten who has run a step in 2026. Chandler was 38th in the Cecil Elite race in 16:28.0, eighteen seconds quicker than his state time.

The board actually has him a hair behind Aaron Ches. We moved him ahead on the rule this whole project runs on: when it is a tie, the runner who showed up wins it. Eighteen seconds of improvement inside the deepest race in Florida beats a nine-month-old time. Chandler was Bolles's second man behind a runner nobody saw coming, and he is the only returning 2A boy in this ten who ran faster in August than he did in November.

9. Aaron Ches, Jr. — (P), DNF

Twelfth in 2A at state in 16:26.1, the seventh-fastest returning mark in the class, and the hardest name on this page to place, for two separate reasons.

First, he did not skip opening weekend. He entered the Cecil Field Elite race and did not finish. A DNF is not a slow time, and it is not evidence he has lost anything. Dropping him below runners a minute slower would be a bigger mistake than the one it avoids. But it is not nothing either. He was on the line, the race happened, and there is no mark.

Second, the Cecil entry lists him at Bolles and our returner data has him at Episcopal, with no transfer on record. Episcopal's boys did run at Cecil and he is not among them. The likely story is a summer move that happened after our file was built, but we cannot confirm it from these results, so we are not putting a school next to his name yet. Both are 2A, so his ranking does not change either way. What changes is whose team he scores for, and Bolles is already first in the class.

10. Cole Galuski, Berkeley Prep (Tampa), Jr. — (P)

Fifteenth in 2A at state in 16:28.3, and he takes the last spot on the cleanest break anywhere on this board. The next two names are fifteen seconds back.

Look at what sits above him, though. From Alam at fourth down to Galuski at tenth, seven runners are packed inside about ten seconds, and six of the seven have not run a race in 2026. That block is not really ranked. It is a queue waiting for somebody to post a result.

Berkeley Prep did not race either, which makes it the fourth 2A program in this top ten to sit out. Montverde, McKeel, Gulliver Prep and Berkeley Prep account for five of these ten names between them, and zero races.

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Just missed

Armaan Sharma (Bolles, So.) is the closest miss and the highest returner left off the page. He was eighth in 2A at state in 16:21.4 as a freshman and ran 16:44 at Cecil, 23 seconds off on a course that cost the field nothing. A sophomore giving back 23 seconds in August is not alarming and it is not evidence either. He is the first name in the moment he runs to form.

Emilio Perez-Garcia (Gulliver Prep, Sr.), Nathaniel Sage (Edgewood, Jr.) and Tyler Keating (Gulliver Prep, Jr.) are all sitting on last November. Edgewood raced five boys in the Cecil B race without Sage, the same pattern as Suwannee and Haley.

Four movers landed just outside, and they are the most interesting names in this section. Jeffery Tanner Turley (Dunedin, Sr.) was 138th in 2A at state and took 96 seconds off at Jim Ryun. John William Martin (Fernandina Beach, Jr.) went 18:09.3 to 16:52 in the Cecil Elite race, 77 seconds. Lawson Phillips (Florida High, So.) found 36 and Luke LaHaye (Calvary Christian, Clearwater, Jr.) found 24. All four are 21 to 24 seconds behind the tenth spot, which is the honest gap. Any of them running that again in October is ranked.

Turley's 96 seconds is the biggest jump by a 2A boy who broke 17:00, but not the biggest in the class. Owen Kalshoven (Dunedin, So.) took 208 seconds off and Logan Milo (Calvary Christian, Clearwater, Jr.) took 201. Both were nowhere near the front in November. That is the kind of result that turns into a ranking in October rather than August.

Bolles has more new names than Rigdon. Wyatt Cleek (Jr.) ran 16:52 in the Elite race and Vincent Barragan (Jr.) won his section of the B race in 17:00, neither with a state appearance last year. Bolles put six boys at 17:05 or faster, and four of the six did not exist in the returner data at all.

The hard omissions. JP Bracamontes (Bolles, Sr.) was 14th in 2A at state and ran 17:56 at Cecil, 134 places behind Rigdon in the same race. Dominic Sadonis (Angeline Academy, Fr.) was 16th in 2A as an eighth grader and came up a full minute short at Ragin' Storm. Henry Camp (Bolles, Sr.) and Dominic Martinez (Frostproof, Jr.) also opened well off. All of them are top twenty returning marks in 2A, none is ranked, and none is written off. We do not rank anybody on a time they had a chance to defend and did not.

And here is the strangest thing on this page. Three of those five are Bolles runners. Five Bolles returners entered the Cecil Elite race. One improved. One did not finish. The other three ran 23, 24 and 89 seconds below their state marks, while two boys with no state history at all finished ahead of every single one of them. Almost exactly the same split shows up in the Bolles girls' race.

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How we ranked them

• Courses do not all run the same speed, so we do not compare raw times. Cecil Field is the yardstick, since most of the state's best runners were there. For the other meets we look at kids who raced both that course and last year's state meet and use the gap to work out what a time was worth.
• On the boys' side August and November times turn out to run about even, so a 2A boy's opener and his state time can sit side by side.
• Runners who have not opened are ranked on last November and marked (P). It gives them no credit for the summer, and it still leaves seven of these ten unraced.
• Pine Forest is thrown out. Five runners, disagreeing by nearly three minutes, four of them from one school, one of them the athlete we would be correcting. Frederick Gunther is ranked on judgment instead, and how we end up pricing that course before week 2 decides whether he is second in this class or tenth.
• Jim Ryun, Ragin' Storm, Lehigh and Ocoee all have enough behind them to trust. Cecil needs no correction at all, which matters here, because eight of these ten either ran there or are being measured against somebody who did.
• 406 Class 2A boys have a mark on the board, either an opener or a state time. 148 of them ran the state meet last fall.
• Class is the 2026-27 FHSAA classification. Every 2A school named here held the same class last season.
• We checked the fast August runners from schools with no class listed. The only one worth a second look is Ryder Dempsey of Geneva Classical Academy in Lakeland, and his school needs confirming against the 1A list, not this one.
• Roster warning: Aaron Ches shows up at Bolles in the Cecil results and at Episcopal in the returner data, with no transfer recorded. Both are 2A, so his ranking holds. His team does not.

Week 2 is when the seven names above with nothing to show start turning into results, and this list is going to look different. Check back for the updated top ten, and the full opening weekend recap with all eleven meets is right here.

The next class up: the Class 3A boys top 10, where Belen Jesuit holds four of the top eight and the fastest boy in Florida is still only second.