Five of Florida's ten best girls cross country teams did not race a step this weekend, including the one we have ranked first. Here is how we ranked them anyway, and what the list says about the five that did.
Florida girls cross country team rankings, after opening weekend: August 21-22, 2026
Bishop Kenny is the best girls cross country team in Florida and did not enter a meet this weekend. Neither did Episcopal, Spanish River, Bishop Moore or Carrollton. That is five of our top ten, and a ranking that left them out would not be a ranking of Florida. It would be a ranking of attendance.
So they are in it, and here is exactly what that means.
Two kinds of evidence, one scale
Every girl who raced August 21-22 has her time converted to a Cecil Field equivalent using the course offsets at the bottom of this page. Every team that did not field five runners is entered at its returning five from the 2025 state meet, plus 28.8 seconds — the measured gap between what the girls' field ran in November and what the same 173 runners ran at Cecil Field in August.
Then all 215 teams go into one virtual race, scored the normal way: top five count, sixth and seventh displace, low score wins. Forty-four of the 215 are entered on projection.
The 28.8-second conversion is doing real work, so be clear about what it assumes. It credits an absent team with no improvement over last November and no incoming freshman or transfer. Every team on this list that raced got to show what it did over the summer. Every team that did not is frozen at what it proved in the fall.
That cuts against the absent teams as often as it flatters them. Nease is tenth here after being our twelfth-ranked 4A team on returners alone. Niceville is second with one returner in the entire program.
Teams marked (P) are ranked on projection. Everyone else raced.
1. Bishop Kenny, 3A — 271 (P)
The best returning five in the state, and it is not close. Taylor Lawhon, Camila Giles, Jillian Jakab and the McEnany sisters averaged 19:10.6 at the state meet inside a 1:36 spread. Converted forward, that is a 19:39.4 team average with the same spread — better than anything that actually ran this weekend.
Our preseason projection had Bishop Kenny first in 3A at 49 points, the lowest projected score of any girls team in Florida in any class. Nothing that happened Friday or Saturday challenged it, because nothing that happened Friday or Saturday involved them.
They are also the team with the most to lose from this method, in the sense that they are ranked first on evidence they have not refreshed since November. First is what the evidence says. The evidence is nine months old.
2. Niceville, 4A — 317
The best team in Florida that can prove it.
19:47.8 average, 1:16 spread — the tightest one-through-five of any ranked team. Riley Marise 19:17, Anais Almonte 19:18, Harmony Holland 19:43, Lola Jackson 20:08, Carolina Ramos 20:33.
And the fact that makes them the most interesting team on this list: Marise is thirtieth in the merged field. Niceville ranks second in Florida without a single runner inside the top twenty-five, and does it with one returner from the 2025 state meet. They are not in our preseason team projections at all — they did not have the returning bodies to project.
Every other team in the top four is running roughly the group it was expected to run. Niceville built a new one.
3. Creekside, 4A — 336
The best five-man average of any team that raced, 19:40.0, and third on the list, which is the argument for scoring rather than averaging in a single line.
Eva Delaney 18:57, Emma Godfrey 19:08, Ivey Edgell 19:16, Hadleigh Roberts 19:30 — four girls inside 19:30, more than any team in the state, projected or otherwise. Then Elena Schultz at 21:29 and a 2:32 spread.
Note that Creekside sits ahead of Chiles by eight points. On a raced-only version of this list the two are reversed. Dropping five projected teams into the field rewards a deep top four slightly more than it rewards a tight pack, and that was enough to swap them. Take those eight points as noise.
4. Chiles, 3A — 344
19:45.4 average, with the best front pair of any team that raced: Emma-Claire Tanenbaum 18:48 and Kaia Ables 18:59, tenth and sixteenth among all Florida girls on the weekend. Then sixty-five seconds of nothing to Charlotte Sikes at 20:04, and a 1:52 spread.
Projected second in 3A at 65 points, ranked fourth overall, and now looking up at a Bishop Kenny team they have not raced.
5. Episcopal, 2A — 367 (P)
Six returners averaging 19:26.0 at state inside 1:35.8, converting to 19:54.8. Kate Brice leads at a converted 19:05.6, and the class rank is the headline: projected first in 2A at 50 points, in a class where the best team that actually raced — Bolles — sits sixteenth overall.
2A is the class where sitting out costs the least, because there is nobody in it running fast enough in August to make the absence look like a risk.
6. Spanish River, 4A — 403 (P)
Projected first in 4A at 93 points, and the deepest projected roster in the state at seven returners. Alba Antunez-Perez converts to 18:49.1, with Lailani Levy at 19:11.0 behind her.
Then a 2:20 spread to a fifth runner at 21:09.3, which is why the No. 1 team in 4A on paper is sixth overall here. Spanish River's problem is the same as Creekside's, and unlike Creekside they have not had a chance to show it is fixed.
7. Bishop Moore, 3A — 433 (P)
Annabella Tomasic converts to 18:04.3, the fastest runner in the entire scoring field, projected or raced. She ran 17:35.5 at state as a freshman and is the No. 1 individual in Florida.
Then 19:45.9, 20:14.4, 20:31.1, 20:44.9, and a 2:40.6 spread that is the widest of any team in the top ten. Bishop Moore is a great runner and a good team, and this ranking cannot tell you which of those two things showed up over the summer.
8. Lourdes, 3A — 490
The most balanced team that raced: Sofia Jimenez 19:21, Alessandra Perez 19:43, Marisa Mantecon 19:52, then 20:50 and 21:06 for a 1:45 spread.
Also the most crowded address in Florida. 3A now holds Bishop Kenny, Chiles, Bishop Moore and Lourdes inside the overall top eight, with Dillard, Vanguard and Ponte Vedra behind them. Lourdes was projected fourth in that class. They are still fourth in it.
9. Carrollton, 2A — 552 (P)
The team nobody has been talking about. Six returners, a 19:46.2 state average, a 1:36.1 spread, and a projected 2A rank of second behind Episcopal at 83 points. Daniela Hernandez converts to 19:14.0.
Two of the top nine teams in Florida are 2A schools that did not race. That is the strangest fact this exercise turned up.
10. Nease, 4A — 569
The biggest riser on the girls' side, and the best case for why racing matters. Nease was our twelfth-ranked 4A team at 293 projected points. Had they sat out, this method would have entered them at a 21:30.8 average and ranked them somewhere in the thirties.
They raced instead, and went 19:33, 19:55, 20:07, 20:52, 21:24: a 20:22.2 average, a 1:51 spread, and tenth in Florida. Their boys were second in the state. Whatever happened at Nease this summer was not gender-specific.
Just missed
St. Thomas Aquinas (577) is eight points behind Nease with a better average and a 2:35 spread. Sunlake (620) won Lecanto with 20 points. Sarasota (623, P) is projected third in 4A and did not race. Dillard (649, P) is projected fifth in 3A and did not race.
Ponte Vedra (660) won Spikes & Spurs with 37 points and is the one team on this list whose position depends on a course offset we cannot pin down. See the note below.
Bolles (690) is sixteenth, the best 2A team that raced, sitting behind two 2A teams that did not. Vanguard (708) has Lyla Hallick at 18:37 — ninth among all Florida girls, in her first race in a Vanguard singlet after transferring from Ocala Forest — and a 3:21 one-to-five gap, wider than anything in the top ten.
The fastest girl in Florida is not in any of this
Arabella Duffell ran 17:53 at Cecil Field, the only girl in the state under 18:00 and the fastest time actually run all weekend by twenty seconds. On converted time her margin over the next-fastest girl in Florida is twelve seconds. Lake Nona entered her and nobody else — one runner, no team, no score. She does not appear in the virtual field because the virtual field is made of teams.
Behind her, the fastest girls in Florida not attached to a top-ten team, on converted time: Natalia Gaona-Zelaya (Wiregrass Ranch) 18:05.1, Mary Summers (Seven Rivers Christian) 18:06.2, Avery Hartley (Bartram Trail) 18:13.0, Katherine Eudaly (Plant) 18:13.8, Lydia Vincent (Zephyrhills) 18:14.0, Katelin Wilcox (East Lake) 18:35.0.
Six girls inside twenty-two seconds of each other, on five different courses, none of whom has raced any of the others. The individual rankings are here, and they are a harder problem than this one.
What this list is actually telling you
Five of the ten fastest girls teams in Florida are ranked on evidence from last November. Four of those five are the projected No. 1 in their class. The one team in the top four that raced and was not expected to be there is Niceville, and they are second.
Read it as two lists laid over each other, because that is what it is. Everything marked (P) is a prediction. Everything else is a result. September is when they start settling it.
The top 10
| # | Team | Class | Score | Adj. 5-avg | 1-5 spread | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bishop Kenny | 3A | 271 | 19:39.4 | 1:36.0 | (P) returners |
| 2 | Niceville | 4A | 317 | 19:47.8 | 1:16.0 | Cecil Field |
| 3 | Creekside | 4A | 336 | 19:40.0 | 2:32.0 | Cecil Field |
| 4 | Chiles | 3A | 344 | 19:45.4 | 1:52.0 | Cecil Field |
| 5 | Episcopal | 2A | 367 | 19:54.8 | 1:35.8 | (P) returners |
| 6 | Spanish River | 4A | 403 | 19:53.1 | 2:20.2 | (P) returners |
| 7 | Bishop Moore | 3A | 433 | 19:52.1 | 2:40.6 | (P) returners |
| 8 | Lourdes | 3A | 490 | 20:10.4 | 1:45.0 | Cecil Field |
| 9 | Carrollton | 2A | 552 | 20:15.0 | 1:36.1 | (P) returners |
| 10 | Nease | 4A | 569 | 20:22.2 | 1:51.0 | Cecil Field |
Next five: St. Thomas Aquinas 577, Sunlake 620, Sarasota 623 (P), Dillard 649 (P), Ponte Vedra 660.
If you only count the teams that raced: Niceville, Chiles, Creekside, Lourdes, Nease, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sunlake, Ponte Vedra, Bolles, Vanguard.
How this was built
Every girls varsity finish from August 21-22 was converted to a Cecil Field equivalent, merged into one virtual race, and scored with standard cross country rules: top five score, sixth and seventh displace, five finishers required. Each school is scored from its best meet, using its five fastest across all sections.
A team is entered on projection when it has five or more returners from the 2025 state meet and did not field five finishers this weekend. Two teams that did enter a meet are also on projection, because their returning scorers did not finish one: Riverview (Sarasota), which ran twenty-five girls and none of its six returners, and North Fort Myers, where four of five returners recorded a DNF at Lehigh. Providence raced six of its seven returners and is scored on its August result, slow as it was.
The girls' offsets are anchored to Cecil Field rather than to the state meet, because the girls' field ran 28.8 seconds slower in August than in November while the boys ran even. Anchoring to state would have handed every girls team the same discount and told us nothing about the courses.
| Course | Offset | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cecil Field | baseline | 173 girls |
| Holloway Park (Jim Ryun) | +47.1 | 30 girls |
| Ragin' Storm | +35.2 | 23 girls |
| Lehigh | −12.3 | 28 girls |
| Lemon Bay | +0.8 | 17 girls |
| Pine Forest | +74.8 | scaled from boys |
| Dueling Summits | +68.2 | scaled from boys |
| Spikes & Spurs | +33.6 | scaled from boys |
| Lecanto | +26.7 | scaled from boys |
| Ocoee Kickstart | −3.6 | scaled from boys |
| Villages Buffalo | unrated | no returners ran |
This is one place the team rankings and the individual rankings deliberately differ. There we declined to convert Lecanto and Spikes & Spurs at all, because ten and seven girls are not enough to price a course and an individual ranking can simply say so. A team ranking cannot: every school has to land in the same virtual race or none of them can be compared. So we scale instead of abstaining, and we flag it.
Girls-derived numbers are used where fifteen or more returners raced the course. Everything else is the boys' offset multiplied by 1.21, the ratio of the two fields' median state times. That scaling validates well where we can check it: Holloway measures +47.1 from thirty girls, and scaling the boys' +38.2 predicts +46.2.
The Spikes & Spurs caveat. It is the worst-measured course in the state on the girls' side — ten returners, scattering from a minute fast to three and a half minutes slow. At the scaled-boys value of +33.6, Ponte Vedra is fifteenth. Priced from the girls who actually ran it, somewhere between +2.1 and −14.3, they drop further. No other team's position moves across that range, which is why we are comfortable publishing the rest of the list and flagging this one.
Out-of-state entries are excluded: the Georgia teams at Cecil Field and Dueling Summits.
What moves this list
Bishop Kenny, Episcopal, Spanish River, Bishop Moore or Carrollton pinning on a number, any number, which would convert half this top ten from prediction to result in a single Saturday. Creekside and Spanish River finding a fifth runner. Niceville proving that August was not a one-off. And Ponte Vedra racing anywhere we can actually price.
The girls individual top ten is here, the boys team rankings are here, and the full opening-weekend recap, all eleven meets, is here.
Frequently Asked Questions
How are teams that did not race included in the rankings? expand_more
A team with five or more returners from the 2025 state meet that did not field five finishers is entered at its returning five plus 28.8 seconds. That is the measured gap between what the girls' field ran in November and what the same 173 runners ran at Cecil Field in August. It credits an absent team with no summer improvement and no incoming freshman, so it cuts against them as often as it helps.
Why is Bishop Kenny ranked first without racing? expand_more
They have the best returning five in the state by a clear margin: a 19:10.6 state-meet average inside a 1:36 spread, which converts to 19:39.4 and is faster than anything that actually ran this weekend. They were also the lowest projected score of any girls team in Florida in any class, at 49 points in 3A.
What makes Niceville the most notable team on the list? expand_more
They rank second in Florida without a single runner inside the top twenty-five, on the tightest one-through-five spread of any ranked team at 1:16, and with exactly one returner from the 2025 state meet. They do not appear in the preseason projections at all because they did not have the returning bodies to project.
Why are the girls' course offsets anchored to Cecil Field instead of the state meet? expand_more
The girls' field ran 28.8 seconds slower in August than in November, while the boys ran even. Anchoring to the state meet would have applied that same August penalty to every girls team and told us nothing about how the individual courses compare.
Why is Arabella Duffell not in these team rankings? expand_more
Lake Nona entered her and nobody else. Her 17:53 at Cecil Field was the only sub-18:00 run in Florida this weekend and the fastest time actually run all weekend by twenty seconds, but a team needs five finishers to score, so she does not appear in the virtual field.