Nease opens at No. 1 with a returning state scorer in street clothes, a team with one runner at last year's state meet is second, and the projected 4A champion is sixth because it raced. Here is how the 4A boys teams stack up.
Florida Class 4A boys cross country team rankings, after opening weekend: August 21-22, 2026
4A is the deepest boys class in Florida and the one where opening weekend rearranged the most. Nease scores 82 points against a second place of 117. Flagler Palm Coast, which had exactly one runner at the 2025 state meet, is second. And Niceville — the projected 4A champion by sixty-two points in the preseason — is sixth, because five of its six returning scorers ran slower in August than they did in November.
That last one is the honest cost of the method and it is worth saying out loud. A team that races is stuck with what it ran. A team that stays home is frozen at last November. Niceville raced.
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 4A individuals are here. The other class team lists: 1A boys, 2A boys, 3A boys and 4A girls.
1. Nease — 82 points
Cecil Field. Five-man average 16:09.8, spread 0:55.0, the tightest one-through-five of any team in this top fourteen. Rishi Chopra 15:39, Matthew Ishee 15:54, Gideon Churchill 16:20, Joseph Morley 16:22, Colin Lasota 16:34, with Ayden Dixon 17:00 and Matthew Myers 17:08 behind them.
They were second to Belen Jesuit in the Cecil Elite race and won the Boys B race outright, and in a 4A-only field they score 82 against a second-place 117 — the third-lowest score any boys team put up in any class, behind Belen's 42 in 3A and Bolles's 45 in 2A. Four of their five scorers took time off their state marks, and one of them took a chunk: Gideon Churchill went 18:02.0 at state and 16:20 in August, a 102-second swing that turned Nease's fifth man into its third.
Then the part that should worry the rest of 4A. Charles Carlson did not run. He was 16:26.2 at the state meet, which would have made him Nease's No. 3 scorer on Saturday, and he was not on the line. Nease opened at 16:09.8 with a returning state scorer in street clothes.
2. Flagler Palm Coast — 117 points
Spikes & Spurs, and the biggest beneficiary of doing the arithmetic. Raw, their 16:47 average looks like a mid-list team. On a course we read as slow it comes back at 16:20.1, second in 4A and third-best in the state.
Douglas Seth's 15:59.5 is worth 15:31.7 at Cecil, the third-fastest converted mark by any 4A boy this weekend. Behind him Dylan Ciardi 16:19.3, Mateo Almeida 16:22.6, Enzo McGovern 16:35.3 and Owen Stackpole 16:51.4, all five inside 1:19.7. They won the meet.
And they had one returner from the 2025 state meet: Seth. Every other scorer on this team is new to the board. That is both the reason to be excited about them and the reason to hold second loosely, because there is no November baseline to check any of it against — and because Spikes & Spurs is the course on our board we trust least. The runners there who also ran the state meet disagree by minutes, and Seth is one of them. Flagler holds second across almost the whole plausible range of that course, which is about as settled as a converted result gets, but it is a conversion.
3. Lake Minneola — 168 points
Cecil Field, third in the Elite race. Average 16:23.0, spread 2:42.0. Quentin Thompson 15:16, Jacob Kelly 16:07, Drew Sasson 16:08, Matthew Lydiard 16:26, then a wait, then Joshua Ping 17:58, with Noah Perez 18:00 sixth.
Thompson's 15:16 is the fastest mark by any 4A boy in Florida this weekend, by a tenth of a second over Strawberry Crest's Jaxon Kiper, and seventy-four seconds better than his own state time. The front four is the best front four in the class: Lake Minneola's top four average 15:59, Nease's average 16:04. The whole gap between first and third is the fifth man.
Ping ran 20:13.0 at state and 17:58 in August, which is a 135-second improvement and still the thing keeping this team out of second. Preston Pautienus, an 18:05.8 state runner, did not race.
4. George Steinbrenner — 253 points
Jim Ryun, at Holloway Park, and they won the varsity boys race. Converted average 16:52.7, spread 1:26.7. Jack Bronder 16:03.1, Oliver Day 16:34.5, London Paladino 16:57.0, Luke Bronder 17:19.0, Punya Desai 17:29.8.
The preseason had them sixth in 4A with a 2:45.1 returning spread. They cut that to 1:26.7 in one summer, mostly because Luke Bronder went from 18:58.1 at state to a 17:19.0 equivalent — a ninety-nine-second swing.
It happened despite a bad day from the man who was their No. 2 returner. Max Tschopp, 17:04.0 at state, came back at 19:20.6 and finished seventh on his own team. Steinbrenner is fourth in 4A with their second-best returning runner more than two minutes off. That is a real cushion.
5. Creekside — 265 points
Cecil Field. Average 16:57.8, spread 1:30.0. Eli Scharf 16:21, Samuel Cassiani 16:33, Bryce Cunningham 16:51, Chase Petrick 17:13, Spencer Halasz 17:51, with Zachary Thomas 18:10 and Harrison Lafser 18:17 next.
One of these five was at the 2025 state meet. Scharf, Cunningham, Petrick and Halasz are all new to the board, and Scharf's 16:21 as a No. 1 is nineteenth in the 4A field. There is no returning-team projection worth comparing this to, which cuts both ways: nothing about Creekside's placement is inherited and nothing about it is corroborated.
6. Niceville — 287 points
Cecil Field, Elite race, all six returners back on the line. Average 16:56.8, spread 1:42.0. Bryant Olson 15:44, Reid Sadowski 16:56, Sebastian Riemer 17:17, Brody Mathis 17:21, Carson Jackson 17:26, then Brayden Riemer 17:34 and Christopher Dinan 17:35.
The preseason had Niceville as the 4A favorite at thirty-seven points, on six returning state runners inside a 0:28.1 spread. On Saturday, Olson took twenty-six seconds off his state time and the other five ran between sixteen and fifty-seven seconds slower than theirs, and the spread went to 1:42.
The method is the same for everybody: a team that raced is stuck with what it ran, so they are sixth. At their state-meet fitness they are a top-three team in this class, and there is nothing in one August result that says they are not.
7. St. Cloud — 328 points
Jim Ryun, third in the varsity race and second in the JV race. Converted average 17:08.3, spread 1:42.2. Luis Rivera 16:04.8, Koda Harkema 17:02.8, Carson Devlin 17:14.2, Marcos Quinones 17:32.5, Brody Ansbaugh 17:47.0.
One St. Cloud runner was at the 2025 state meet: Ansbaugh, and he came back forty-eight seconds slower than his state mark, finishing fifth on his own team. Rivera's 16:04.8 equivalent is the eleventh-fastest individual mark in 4A and he was on nobody's returning list. This is the least-anchored team in the top ten and the one whose seventh place carries the widest error bar.
8. Hagerty — 337 points
Spikes & Spurs, third behind Flagler Palm Coast and Ponte Vedra. Converted average 17:10.6, spread 1:33.2. Nate Winslow 16:25.7, Camden Thompson 16:28.0, Reid Henson 17:17.8, Wesley Lizon 17:42.8, Elijah Lizon 17:58.9.
Winslow ran essentially his state time — 16:27.9 then, 16:25.7 now — and Thompson matched him, which is a strong front two. Behind them, Wesley Lizon was 16:31.5 at state and comes back at 17:42.8 here, seventy-one seconds off, and at his November level he makes Hagerty a top-five 4A team.
Hagerty is the team on this page most exposed to the Spikes & Spurs problem. Read them as somewhere from sixth to thirteenth, not as eighth.
9. Wiregrass Ranch (Wesley Chapel) — 366 points — (P)
Bogdan Anghel 16:38.5, Avi Bhatia 16:43.7, Wade Pheffer 17:12.7, Dominic Martin 17:38.0, James Maughan 18:11.8. Projected average 17:16.9, spread 1:33.3.
They fielded a team and did not enter their team. None of Wiregrass Ranch's five returning state scorers raced this weekend; the five who did averaged a 19:14.9 equivalent, which is not a varsity result and not what this program is. So they are entered on their returning five instead.
On the boys' side August and November times run about even, so this is not a generous placement. It credits Wiregrass Ranch with no summer improvement and no incoming freshman while every team above them is stuck with exactly what it ran. The preseason had them fourth in 4A.
10. Bartram Trail — 381 points
Cecil Field. Average 17:14.6, spread 2:56.0, the widest in this top ten. Bryce Motycka 16:09, Jesse Hall 16:31, Stephan Dickson 17:09, Trey Hollis 17:19, then 1:46 of nothing, then Ben Mathis and Sam Carpio both 19:05.
The front four is a top-five 4A front four: Motycka took forty-eight seconds off his state mark, Hall sixty, and all four returning scorers who raced improved. The fifth man is the entire difference between tenth and about fifth — hand Bartram the fifth runner Creekside has and the two of them swap ends of this list.
Just missed
11. Buchholz, 392 — Cecil Field, average 17:14.4, better than Bartram Trail's, on a 2:45 spread. Andrew Sides 15:49 is the eighth-fastest 4A mark this weekend and Finn Richards 16:40 is a real second man; the gap from third to fourth is sixty-five seconds. Brennen Bentley, 16:14.8 at state, did not race — he prices out around sixteenth in this 4A field, which makes him a second man twenty-five seconds ahead of the one they used, and he moves this team into the top eight by himself.
12. Melbourne, 393 (P) — did not enter a meet, and none of its five returning scorers ran anywhere. Charles Hanus 16:40.9, Trent Orcutt 16:53.4, Colin Hedgespeth 17:13.6, Dax Tweedy 17:59.8, Jayden Pereira 18:03.9, on a 1:23 spread. Fifth in 4A in the preseason, and the single biggest unknown in the class.
13. Tocoi Creek, 420 — Cecil Field, 17:29.6 average and a 1:04.0 spread, the second-tightest five-man pack in this top fourteen behind Nease. Carter Colitzas 16:50 and Clayton Downer 16:59 in front, then Maddox Wick, Jack Tourtelot and Tyler Peeples inside two seconds of each other at 17:52, 17:53 and 17:54. No star, no hole.
14. Sunlake, 427 — Lecanto, where they won both the varsity and JV races. Converted average 17:29.8, spread 1:22.7, Collin Langston 16:56.3 leading. This is the only team on the page whose ranking leans on the Lecanto conversion, which is the thinnest number we carry; on a neutral Lecanto they are eighteenth.
Two more worth naming. East Ridge, 16th, has a better five-man average (17:25.6) than three teams ranked above them, has Axel Sallault at 15:47, seventh-fastest in 4A, and has a 3:33.0 spread that buries all of it. And Plant, 19th — seventh in 4A in the preseason — got a 15:39.3 equivalent from Antonino Pipia, the fifth-fastest 4A mark this weekend, but ran without Jack Christy (16:36.5 at state) and Wyatt LaGasse (17:06.1) and posted a 3:21 spread.
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 4A 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 4A-only field, so the point totals do not compare to the statewide list — only the order does.
- Sixty-one 4A boys teams scored. Seven are entered on projection and marked (P). On the boys' side August and November times run about even, so a projected team carries its state marks forward essentially unchanged — no summer credit, no incoming freshman — while a team that raced is stuck with what it ran in the heat.
- Seven of the ten ranked teams raced Cecil Field or Holloway Park, the two conversions we trust most, so most of this page is ordered by races we can check.
- Spikes & Spurs is the one we cannot honestly convert, and it carries Flagler Palm Coast at second and Hagerty at eighth. Flagler holds second across almost the whole plausible reading of that course. Hagerty does not — they are a top-six team if the course was slower than we think and outside the ten if it was faster.
- Holloway Park is the number to fix first in week two. It is the best-sampled course outside Cecil and it still recomputes about eight seconds away from the figure we are carrying. We kept the carried value here so this page agrees with the statewide and 1A–3A lists already published, and we are saying so rather than quietly changing it.
- Class is the 2026-27 FHSAA classification, not last year's. A school only appears in our returner data if it has a returning runner from the 2025 state meet — Strawberry Crest sent someone to state and he graduated, so the school carries no class in our data and had to be placed from the FHSAA document directly. Without that, Jaxon Kiper would not be on this page at all.
- Georgia and Tennessee runners at Cecil Field are left out.
Positions four through eight are eighty-four points apart, which at this stage of the season is noise. Positions nine through twelve include two teams that did not put a real varsity five on a course. Check back for the updated top ten, and the full opening weekend recap with all eleven meets is right here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the No. 1 Class 4A boys cross country team in Florida in Week 1? expand_more
Nease, on 82 points against a second place of 117. They averaged 16:09.8 inside a fifty-five-second spread at Cecil Field, the tightest one-through-five in the class, and they did it without Charles Carlson, a returning state scorer at 16:26.2 who would have been their No. 3.
Why is Niceville only sixth after being the preseason 4A favorite? expand_more
They raced. Niceville was projected first in 4A by sixty-two points on six returning state runners inside a 0:28.1 spread. At Cecil Field, Bryant Olson took twenty-six seconds off his state time and the other five ran between sixteen and fifty-seven seconds slower, and the spread went to 1:42. A team that races is ranked on what it ran; a team that stays home is frozen at last November.
Who ran the fastest Class 4A boys time on opening weekend? expand_more
Quentin Thompson of Lake Minneola, 15:16 at Cecil Field, seventy-four seconds better than his 2025 state time. Jaxon Kiper of Strawberry Crest is a tenth of a second behind him on a converted basis, and Douglas Seth of Flagler Palm Coast is third.
Which course conversion is least reliable in these rankings? expand_more
Spikes and Spurs, which carries Flagler Palm Coast at second and Hagerty at eighth. The runners there who also ran the state meet disagree by minutes. Flagler holds second across almost the whole plausible reading of that course; Hagerty ranges from sixth to thirteenth, so read them as a bracket rather than a placement.