Boys 1A Team Rankings — Week 1

Projected five-man average 17:20.9, spread 1:15.8.
Isaiah Manderson 16:37.6, Carson Ohman 17:02.4, Jed Fears 17:21.6, Walter Goncalves 17:46.4, Moses Peterlevitz 17:53.4.

They did not enter a meet. Not Pine Forest, forty minutes away and on their own side of the state; not anywhere. So the number one team in Class 1A is a team nobody has seen since November.

The projection is still the best one in the class by a real margin, and the reason is the spread. A 1:15.8 gap from one to five is the tightest returning pack in 1A, and it is built on five runners who were all inside 17:54 at a state meet — not on one star and four hopefuls. Three of the five are seniors.

The honest caveat is the one the method forces: Pensacola Christian gets no credit for a summer, and neither is it charged for one. Maclay beat this projection on the course that sets the baseline while actually running. If Pensacola Christian opens in September within twenty seconds of these marks, they are the clear favorite. If they open thirty seconds off, they are third.

Cecil Field. Five-man average 17:24.4, spread 1:51.0.
David Barton 16:15, Gavin McVay 17:15, Beau May 17:36, Will Cintron 17:50, Logan Phipps 18:06, Ben Lawson 19:07, Benton Belcher 20:30.

The best actual performance by a 1A boys team this month, and the biggest single move on the board. Maclay was fourth in the preseason returner rankings at a 18:04.9 average with a 3:43.6 spread — a good front and a hole behind it. At Cecil Field they averaged 17:24.4 and closed the spread to 1:51.0.

That is 40.5 seconds off the five-man average and nearly two minutes off the spread, on a course where the average boy ran level with his state time. Barton opened eight seconds up on Sean Cunningham, the top-ranked individual in the class. McVay, May and Cintron all ran inside 17:50, which is the part that actually matters: the preseason version of this team had one runner under 17:50 and now it has four.

Five points behind a team that has not raced. If you want to rank on evidence rather than arithmetic, Maclay is first and it is not particularly close.

Cecil Field. Five-man average 17:38.2, spread 2:19.0.
Jack Kline 16:33, Broderick Olson 16:36, Finley Smith 17:52, Liam Rios 18:18, Benjamin Bishop 18:52, Noah Zimmer 19:13, Chandler Fike 19:32.

Third in the preseason, third now, and the improvement came from an unexpected direction. Kline was already the third-fastest returning 1A boy; the news is Olson, who was 55th in 1A at state in 17:51.7 and ran 16:36 at Cecil — 75.7 seconds off, three seconds behind his own teammate. Cornerstone now owns two of the seven fastest 1A boys in Florida.

What they do not own is a third man. The gap from Olson at 16:36 to Smith at 17:52 is 1:16, and the full one-to-five spread of 2:19.0 is the widest in the top six. Against Maclay's four-under-17:50, two elite runners and a soft middle scores 131 to 87. Cornerstone's ceiling is high and its floor moves with Smith and Rios.

Cecil Field. Five-man average 18:06.0, spread 1:28.0.
Jesus Martinez 17:25, Zamari Blumenberg 17:31, Roman La Starza 18:12, Kaden Nazareno 18:29, Tedd Du 18:53, Alex Darlington 19:00, Jack McFadden 19:04.

The most improved team in Class 1A, and it happened without their best runner. Holy Trinity was tenth in the preseason at a 19:30.3 average with a 6:52.3 spread — one of the worst structural profiles of any ranked team in the class. They are now fourth at 18:06.0 with a 1:28.0 spread.

Three things did it. Martinez took 34 seconds off. Nazareno went from 19:55.7 at state to 18:29 — 86.7 seconds. Du went from 23:50.2 to 18:53, a swing of nearly five minutes that is either a runner who was hurt in November or a runner who found the sport this summer. And Blumenberg, at 17:31, did not run the state meet at all.

One caution. Aiden Darlington, their returning number one at 16:57.9, finished the Cecil Elite race in 21:09. That is four minutes off, and Holy Trinity ranks fourth without a single point from him. It is also the kind of number that is sometimes a bad day and sometimes a timing or identification error — there is a second Darlington in the same race at 19:00. We are reporting it as it appears in the results and not projecting anything from it. If Aiden Darlington is healthy, this team's five-man average has another 30 seconds in it and the top three gets crowded.

Cecil Field. Five-man average 18:02.8, spread 2:50.0.
Matteo Kirwan 16:34, Aschalew Parker 17:19, Jonah Lehman-Saba 17:42, Joshua Chegwin 19:15, Corban Houdashelt 19:24, Jacob Mcanlly 19:42, Lium Cook 20:34.

Second in the preseason, fifth now, and this is the ranking most likely to be wrong in their favor. Circle Christian raced at Cecil Field without their returning fourth and fifth men — Elias Houdashelt (18:25.1 at state) and William Head (18:59.1) both stayed home. In their place, Chegwin at 19:15 and Corban Houdashelt at 19:24 scored, and the spread ballooned to 2:50.

The front three are excellent and are the reason they still rank fifth. Kirwan, a sophomore, took 82.6 seconds off his freshman state time. Parker ran level. Lehman-Saba is in the results under the misspelling "Joanh Lehman-Saba" and is correctly counted here — he ran 17:42, forty seconds off his 17:01.9 state mark, in his first race back.

Circle Christian with Elias Houdashelt and Head in the lineup projects roughly two minutes better across four and five, which is the difference between fifth and second. They are ranked on the squad they entered.

Lemon Bay. Five-man average 18:20.2, spread 0:50.8.
Nash Akers 18:01.3, Ty Piper 18:01.6, Aiden Stratton 18:09.1, Shepard Anderson 18:36.7, Liam Piper 18:52.1, Mason Weston 19:11.6, Colin Brown 20:47.1.

The newcomer, and the tightest pack in Class 1A by twenty-five seconds. SWFC had three runners at the 2025 state meet — below the five-runner threshold — so they had no preseason team ranking at all. They were invisible. They are now sixth with a one-to-five gap of fifty seconds.

Two of their scorers are Pipers who did not run state, and a third Piper is their eighth man. Akers converted 30.2 seconds faster than his state time and Stratton 12.8 seconds slower. This is a real team that simply was not in the data in July.

Lemon Bay grades 23.6 seconds fast against Cecil Field, on a sample of eight boys, so their converted times carry more uncertainty than the Cecil-based teams above them. Even if you halved that correction, they stay sixth. A 0:50.8 spread scores well in any format and travels well to a state meet.

Cecil Field. Five-man average 18:45.2, spread 1:48.0.
Nathan Kipnis 18:08, Arlo Kistner 18:11, Judson Myers 18:45, Thomas Nichols 18:46, Elijah Larsen 19:56.

Twelfth in the preseason, seventh now, on a clean four-man front — Kipnis, Kistner, Myers and Nichols inside 38 seconds of each other. The fifth man is the whole issue: Larsen at 19:56 is 1:10 behind Nichols and turns a 1:11 four-man spread into a 1:48 five-man one.

No individual heroics here, just a team that moved up on being complete on a day several teams above it were not.

Projected average 18:42.2, spread 2:19.9.
Frankie Flora 17:21.1, Andrew Stanek 17:37.8, Dominick Gilliam 19:14.4, Bracen Evans 19:33.5, Dominic Puglisi 19:41.0.

Sixth in the preseason, eighth now, entirely because other teams raced and they did not. The Flora–Stanek front is good enough to score with anyone in this class; the 1:37 gap from Stanek to Gilliam is the reason they were sixth and not second in July, and nothing has happened to change it either way.

Projected average 18:59.4, spread 1:08.0.
Judah Brown 18:25.0, Treyton Seeman 18:45.2, David Dorn 18:46.5, Jacob Ryle 19:24.3, Carlos Broderick 19:33.0.

The second-tightest projection in the class behind Pensacola Christian, and the most fragile ranking on this board: they have exactly five returners. There is no sixth man in the projection, which means no displacement help and no margin if one of the five is hurt in October. Nobody raced.

Cecil Field. Five-man average 18:54.6, spread 2:54.0.
James Roland 17:03, Sam Jacobo 17:51, Jesse Brewer 19:51, Liam Stevens 19:51, Nathan Owen 19:57.

Tied on points with Marathon at 303 and wins the tiebreak on the sixth runner, 124th in the virtual race to Marathon's 173rd. That is the rule, and it is the right one: the tenth spot in this class goes to the team that actually put six runners on a course this month.

Roland, running in the Boys B race where almost nobody was watching, went 17:03 — 45.3 seconds off his state time and one of the ten fastest 1A boys marks of the weekend. Jacobo backed him at 17:51. Then a 2:00 gap to a three-man block at 19:51, 19:51 and 19:57, which is where the 2:54 spread comes from and why 303 points instead of 230.