Boys 4A Team Rankings — Week 1

Cecil Field. Five-man average of 16:09.8, spread 0:55.0 — the tightest one-through-five of any team in this top 14. 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. 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 been 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.

Spikes & Spurs, and the biggest beneficiary of doing the arithmetic. Raw, their 16:47 average looks like a mid-list team. On a course running 27.8 seconds slow it converts to 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: there is no November baseline to check any of it against.

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 one tenth of a second over Strawberry Crest's Jaxon Kiper, and 74 seconds better than his own state time, and the front four is the best front four in the class: Lake Minneola's top four average 15:59.3, Nease's average 16:03.8. 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 from second. Preston Pautienus, an 18:05.8 state runner, did not race.

Holloway Park, and they won the Jim Ryun 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 returner rankings 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 99-second swing.

It happened despite a bad day from the man who was their No. 2 returner: Max Tschopp, 17:04.0 at state, converted to 19:20.6 and finished seventh on his own team. Steinbrenner is fourth in 4A with their second-best returning runner two minutes off. That is a real cushion.

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 19th 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.

Cecil Field, Elite race, all six back. 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 returner rankings had Niceville as the 4A favorite at 37 points, on six returning state runners and a 0:28.1 spread. On Saturday, Olson took 26 seconds off his state time and the other five ran 16 to 56 seconds slower than theirs, and the spread went to 1:42. Method here is the same for everyone: 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.

Holloway Park, third in the Jim Ryun 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 was 48 seconds slower than his state mark on Saturday, finishing fifth on his own team. Rivera's 16:04.8 equivalent is the 11th-fastest individual mark in 4A and he was not on anybody's returning list. This is the least-anchored team in the top ten and the one whose seventh place carries the widest error bar.

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 converts to 17:42.8 here — 71 seconds off, and a scorer who at his November level makes Hagerty a top-five 4A team.

See the sensitivity table above before treating eighth as a measurement. Hagerty is the team on this page most exposed to the fourteen-runner Spikes & Spurs number.

Fielded a team and did not enter its 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 here on their returning five's 2025 state times plus the 0.6-second August conversion: 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. Average 17:16.9, spread 1:33.3.

The boys' August conversion is close to neutral — the same 162 runners were 0.6 seconds slower at Cecil Field in August than at state in November — 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. Preseason they were fourth in 4A at 173 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 19:05 with Sam Carpio also 19:05.

The front four is a top-five 4A front four: Motycka took 48 seconds off his state mark, Hall 60. All four returning scorers who raced improved. The fifth man is the entire difference between tenth and about fifth — give Bartram Creekside's fifth runner and they finish about 75 points ahead of Creekside.