Boys 3A Team Rankings — Week 1

Cecil Field. Five-man average of 15:54.4, spread 1:17.0. Armando Cruz 15:06, Jack Michalak 15:47, Liam Salom 15:54, Nicholas Veloso 16:22, Dominic De Armas 16:23, with Davi Bodoh at 16:31 and Santiago Muniz at 16:51 behind them.

They are the No. 1 team in Florida in any class, and in a 3A-only field they score 42 points against a second-place 190. Their fifth man converts to 16:23, faster than the No. 2 runner on eleven of the other thirteen teams on this page. That is not a ranking, it is a different category of team.

And Marcelo Mantecon did not run. The defending 3A state champion at 15:03.3 — the fastest returning time by any boy in any class in Florida — stayed home while sixteen Belen teammates raced, ten of them in the Cecil Elite race Cruz won. Belen's projection off its returning five was 15:47.3. They opened at 15:54.4 without the runner who makes that projection, which is to say the gap you see is the gap with their best athlete missing.

Did not enter a meet. Entered here at its returning five's 2025 state times plus the 0.6-second August conversion: Thomas Milton 16:36.5, Ethan Reid 16:37.1, Brian Martinez 16:41.9, Quinn Mullaney 17:16.2, Dayne Kimball 17:17.2. Average 16:53.8, spread 0:40.7.

That spread is the story. It is the tightest one-through-five in 3A by better than a minute, and it comes from five runners who have already done it in a state meet rather than from one August afternoon. The projection is close to neutral for boys — the same 162 runners were 0.6 seconds slower at Cecil in August than at state in November — so this is not a generous placement. It credits Bishop Kenny with no summer improvement and no incoming freshman while every team below it is stuck with exactly what it ran.

Sixth in Florida overall. They are the team most likely to have moved and the team we know least about.

Dueling Summits. Converted average 16:58.7, spread 1:45.1. Isaiah Renn 16:13.4, Carson Weiss 16:33.9, Asher McGrew 16:49.0, Andrew Barnes 17:18.5, Sam Ito 17:58.5, then Chase Sims 18:07.7 and Henry Combs 18:30.5.

They ran 21 boys. Renn was the fastest 3A runner at Dueling Summits, and the front three are legitimately the second-best front three in this class. The fifth man at 17:58.5 is what keeps them at 223 instead of somewhere near 170.

See the sensitivity table above before treating this as third. Leon is a top-seven 3A team under any version of the Dueling Summits number and a top-three team under most of them.

Spikes & Spurs. Converted average 16:55.6 — better than Leon's — spread 1:53.6. Luke Ross 15:37.1, then Colin Bovee 17:00.4, Logan Hunt 17:07.1, Jasper Graham 17:22.5, Aiden Killoran 17:30.7, with Liam Heffernan 17:33.6 and Nathaniel Marciani 17:34.2 right behind.

The best average in the group of four and the worst place in it, which is standard scoring doing its job. Ross converts to the sixth-fastest individual mark in Florida this weekend and then there is a 1:23 wait for the second scorer. Bovee through Killoran fits in 30 seconds, so the team is one runner closing on Ross away from second in this class.

Twelfth in the state. They ran 40 boys and the depth behind the scoring five is real.

Cecil Field, one point back. Average 16:59.0, spread 1:29.0. Trevor Berquist 16:31, Christopher Taylor 16:43, Lachlan Bryniarski 16:45, Jacob Rogers 16:56, Aidan Bone 18:00, then Cooper Gumpert 18:01.

Four runners inside 16:56 and a 64-second hole to the fifth. The front four is better than Leon's and better than Ponte Vedra's; the fifth man is the whole difference. Bone and Gumpert ran within a second of each other, so this is not one runner having a bad day — it is where the roster currently ends.

Eleventh in the state, and the highest-ranked 3A team that actually beat other ranked 3A teams head to head: they were in the same Cecil field as Fort Myers, Fleming Island and Chiles and finished ahead of all three.

Cecil Field. Average 17:01.2, spread 1:23.0. Reed Hagen 16:19, Trae Britton 16:20, Noah Lefko 17:06, Elijah Brown 17:39, Brock Jackson 17:42, Ben Moss 18:03.

Hagen and Britton finished one second apart and give Fort Myers the best 1-2 in 3A outside Belen. Then a 46-second gap. Their spread is the second-tightest of the eight teams that raced in this top ten, which is the argument for them over the two teams above: no single runner is carrying the score.

Nine points covers third through sixth here. Vanguard finished ahead of them in the Cecil Elite race on the same morning, and that is the only head-to-head evidence anywhere in this group.

Jim Ryun, on the most reliable non-Cecil conversion available. Average 17:06.9, spread 2:16.1. Liam Ilea 16:05.7, Nicholas Alvarez 16:58.9, Navid Lozano 17:01.4, Emiliano Lozano 17:06.9, then Tahjier Neal 18:21.8, Eric Chen 18:22.7, Jonah Myers 18:23.0.

The Lozano brothers 5.5 seconds apart, a front four inside 17:07, and then a 1:15 cliff. Their sixth and seventh men are within 1.2 seconds of the fifth, so the pack is there — it is just a minute and a quarter behind where it needs to be. Fix that and Tavares is in the four-team scrum above.

Holloway graded 38.2 seconds slow off 40 returners. This is the best-supported conversion on the page.

Cecil Field. Average 17:12.4, spread 2:10.0. JP Strombeck 15:58, Luke Janke 16:43, Andrew Lou 17:13, Ryder Muyres 18:00, Isaac Garrison 18:08, Jack Loehr 18:13, Jude Harmer 18:35.

Strombeck is one of eight 3A boys who converted under 16:00 this weekend. Behind him the team steps down in 30- to 47-second increments, and the 2:10 spread is what a good front three and an ordinary back half looks like on a scoresheet.

They put 16 boys on the line at Cecil across two sections. The five-through-seven bunching inside 27 seconds is where next month's improvement comes from.

Cecil Field, three points behind Fleming Island. Average 17:13.2, spread 2:30.0. Jonathan Kiros 15:47, Jack Nottingham 16:52, Emerson Gandy 17:26, Noah Olson 17:44, Camp Andrews 18:17, Lowell Mick 18:54.

Kiros converted to 15:47, tied with Belen's Jack Michalak for the fourth-fastest 3A mark of the weekend, and Chiles has the second-widest spread in this top ten. Their returning four projected to a 17:01.1 average; they raced to 17:13.2, so unlike the Tallahassee team above them they did not gain on their own baseline.

Chiles and Fleming Island finished 8th and 9th here and raced each other at Cecil, where Fleming Island won it. Three points is inside the noise of a single runner's day.

Did not enter a meet. Entered at its returning five plus 0.6: Trent Parsons 16:52.2, Bryan Duff 17:29.4, Emari Thomas 17:36.0, Stokes Bryan 17:46.7, Noah Holly 17:50.6, with Thoren Knispel 18:30.1 sixth. Average 17:31.0, spread 0:58.4.

The second-tightest spread in the class behind Bishop Kenny, and no front-runner at all — Parsons is the only Lincoln man under 17:29 and he is 39th in this virtual field. That is a pack team, and pack teams are the ones a projection underrates most, because it prices five returning athletes at exactly what they were and nothing more.

The two Tallahassee 3A programs sitting at 3rd and 10th, plus Chiles at 9th, means the 3A region meet in that corner of the state is going to be the best race nobody outside Leon County watches.