Boys 2A Individual Rankings — Week 1

The 2A state champion, back for a senior year, and the biggest margin on this board. Moss won 2A in 15:35.3, 42 seconds clear of the next returning boy in the class, and Montverde Academy did not enter a meet this weekend — not the boys, not the girls, not a JV squad.

Converted at 15:35.9, he is still first by twenty-eight seconds over the best mark anybody in this class actually ran. That is the rare case where the projection is not really in doubt: no 2A boy got within twenty-eight seconds of Moss's state time this weekend, and the two runners below him would both need substantial improvement just to make it a race.

He is ranked first on a blank line in the results, and it is the only unraced number one on any of our class lists that nobody is likely to argue with.

The name that wasn't 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 — and 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 second-fastest 2A mark of the weekend on the anchor course with no conversion applied and none needed. He beat Armaan Sharma, the fourth-ranked returner in this class, by 40 seconds. He beat Aidan Chandler, twelfth-ranked, by 24. Whatever he was doing last November — a transfer, an injury, a season on the JV — he is now the fastest 2A boy who has actually run in 2026 by a comfortable margin.

He is ranked second on one race, which is exactly as much as anyone in this class has produced besides Moss's absence. Bolles ranks fourth in Florida as a team and Rigdon is the reason the number is not lower.

The most interesting result of the weekend and the least convertible. 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, forty seconds clear of Braeden Hunt of Gulf Breeze and more than a minute clear of third.

Take the course conversion 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's offset rests on five athletes who disagree by nearly three minutes, and Gunther is one of the five, which means the correction applied to him is partly derived from his own result. Depending on which of the defensible estimates you use, his mark is worth 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.

What survives without the conversion: he ran 24.6 seconds faster than his state time on a course that cost Braeden Hunt a full minute and Mason Pohovey 32 seconds. Relative to the only three teammates and rivals with a November comparison, he improved by something between 55 and 85 seconds as a rising sophomore, and he won a race by forty. That is worth third. It is not yet worth second over a 16:04 that needs no arithmetic at all.

Pensacola Catholic's next finisher was 19:12. Gunther needs a real field, and Pine Forest was not one.

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. Converted at 16:18.4.

A freshman running 16:17.8 at the state meet is the strongest improvement profile on this board, and there is no way to collect on it from the sideline. He has the best claim of any (P) below Moss and the least to show for it.

Sixth in 2A at state in 16:18.6, eight-tenths behind Alam, and also unraced. Converted at 16:19.2. He and Alam are separated by less than a second on a board where neither number has been tested, which makes the order between them arbitrary and the pair of them a genuine problem for anyone below.

Tenth in 2A at state in 16:23.9. Gulliver Prep projects eighth in Florida as a team on its returners and did not race a soul, which is a lot of ranking built on November. Iziliaev, Emilio Perez-Garcia and Tyler Keating are all top-fifteen returning marks in this class and none of the three has opened.

Eleventh in 2A at state in 16:24.4, converting to 16:25.0, and the one projection here with an asterisk of its own: Suwannee raced. The Bulldogs put six boys in the Cecil Field B race, led by Daniel Stoltzfoos in 18:06, and Haley was not among them. His teammates ran and he did not.

That is different from a program staying home, and it usually means something. Until it means something specific, he sits at his November number.

Twenty-second in 2A at state in 16:46.1 and one of only three 2A boys in this ten who has run in 2026. Chandler finished 38th in the Cecil Elite race in 16:28.0, eighteen seconds faster than his state time on a course where the field ran dead level with November.

The board puts him ninth, 1.3 seconds behind Aaron Ches. He is ranked eighth, ahead of Ches, on the precedent this project set in 1A: a runner who raced outranks a projection when the board number is a tie, and eighteen seconds of improvement inside the deepest race in Florida is a better piece of evidence than a nine-month-old time. Chandler was Bolles's second man behind a runner nobody expected, and he is the only returning 2A boy in this ten who ran faster in August than he did in November.

Twelfth in 2A at state in 16:26.1, seventh-fastest returning mark in the class, and the hardest entry on this list to place. Ches did not skip opening weekend — he entered the Cecil Field Elite race and did not finish.

A DNF is not a slow time. It is not evidence he has lost anything, and ranking him below runners a minute slower on his November mark would be a bigger error than the one it avoids. But it is also not nothing: he was on the line, the race happened, and there is no mark. He is ranked ninth at his projected number with the DNF stated plainly, and the next Episcopal result will settle it in one direction or the other.

Fifteenth in 2A at state in 16:28.3, converting to 16:28.9, and the last ranked spot on the cleanest break anywhere on this board: Emilio Perez-Garcia, the next name, is fifteen seconds back. From Alam at fourth down to Galuski at tenth, seven runners are packed inside ten and a half seconds — and five of the seven have not raced. That block is not really ordered. It is a queue waiting for a result.

Berkeley Prep did not race. That makes it the fourth 2A program in this top ten to hold a top-fifteen returning mark and keep it in the garage: Montverde, McKeel, Gulliver Prep and Berkeley Prep between them account for five of these ten names and zero races.