Mid-Prairie atop 2A girls preseason cross-country rankings, Pekin 3rd in 1A

Mid-Prairie will be favored to win a girls cross-country title for the fifth consecutive season when the four-time champion Golden Hawks start the 2021 season running at the University of Iowa meet Thursday with a date at Cedar Rapids Prairie scheduled for Saturday Aug. 28.

Mid-Prairie was ranked first in Class 2A when the Iowa High School Track and Field Cross-Country Association released its team preseason rankings.

The rankings will look a bit different this season.

Defending Class 2A champion Danville/New London is in the top spot of the boys rankings. Mid-Prairie is sixth.

The Pekin boys are ninth in Class 1A while Columbus is 14th.

Three Mid-Prairie freshmen finished last season’s girls state tournament cross-country meet with the 34th (Phoebe Shetler), 36th (Abby Fleming) and best (Danielle Hostetler) overall times. Three juniors finished with the third (Jaden Yoder), seventh (Mitzi Evans) and ninth (Sydney Yoder) best times.

Now sophomores and seniors, the Golden Hawks will be challenged by longtime rival Williamsburg. The Raiders had defeated Mid-Prairie at the 2019 state qualifier, but the Golden Hawks won state by a single point.

Pekin’s girls are third in Class 1A.

Fort Madison’s boys are ranked 20th in Class 3A.

The Poll Methodology

The poll is voted upon by a panel of coaches divided by classes.

Head-to-head times and competition is given preference over average times/spread.

Once votes are compiled, those schools falling in the 16th-20th positions have been listed as “Teams to Watch” but starting this season they will be ranked 16 through 20.

Poll Challenges

While preference is given to head-to-head competition it simply isn’t possible for all teams to run against each other throughout the season. Therefore the committees have to do some extrapolation to judge positions of the teams.

Courses vary from year to year and location to location. It isn’t as simple as comparing times because of these variations. Coaches attempt to collaborate on communicating the difficulty of the course when results are compiled.

Teams don’t always run their varsity team. The committee goal is to have all coaches report if they are holding back their varsity runners during a race so proper judgment positions teams.

While the committee does its best to get complete and accurate meet results, times either don’t all get reported or they are delayed. Since results through Saturday meets are considered when releasing polls, it is possible that a head-to-head victory will not be recorded until the following poll.

2021 Preseason Cross-Country Rankings

Boys 4A

1 Sioux City North

2 Dowling Catholic, WDM

3 Iowa City, City High

4 Iowa City, Liberty

5 Dubuque Hempstead

6 Urbandale

7 Cedar Falls

8 Prairie, Cedar Rapids

9 Pleasant Valley

10 Norwalk

11 Ankeny Centennial

12 Iowa City, West

13 Johnston

14 Valley, WDM

15 Ankeny

16 Waukee

17 Linn-Mar, Marion

18 Cedar Rapids Kennedy

19 Bettendorf

20 Ames

Boys 3A

1 Dallas Center Grimes

2 North Polk

3 Pella

4 Solon

5 Marion

6 Decorah

7 Carlisle

8 MOC Floyd Valley

9 Mount Vernon Lisbon

10 Center Point Urbana

11 Dubuque Wahlert

12 Glenwood

13 Clear Creek Amana

14 ADM Adel

15 Waverly-Shell Rock

16 Davenport Assumption

17 Newton

18 Sergeant Bluff-Luton

19 LeMars

20 Fort Madison

Boys 2A

1 Danville/New London

2 Western Christian

3 Tipton

4 Williamsburg

5 Des Moines Christian

6 Mid-Prairie

7 Unity Christian

8 Davis County

9 Monticello

10 Waukon

11 North Fayette Valley

12 East Marshall

13 GCGR

14 Albia

15 GLR-CL

16 Okoboji

17 Forest City

18 Jesup

18 Dike-New Hartford

20 Clarinda

Boys 1A

1 Earlham

2 ACGC (Guthrie Center)

3 Maquoketa Valley (Delhi)

4 South Winneshiek (Calmar)

5 Ogden

6 Bellevue

7 Madrid

8 Hudson

9 Pekin

10 Central Decatur (Leon)

11 Fort Dodge St. Edmond

12 Nodaway Valley (Greenfield)

13 Newman (Mason City)

14 Columbus (Columbus Junction)

15 Central Springs (Manly)

16 Siouxland Christian (Sioux City)

17 CB St. Albert (Council Bluffs)

18 Valley Lutheran (Cedar Falls)

19 Tri-Center (Neola)

20 Manson Northwest Webster

Girls 4A

1 Dubuque Hempstead

2 Southeast Polk

3 Valley, West Des Moines

4 Johnston

5 Pleasant Valley

6 Cedar Rapids Prairie

7 Ankeny Centennial

8 Bettendorf

9 Dowling Catholic

10 Linn-Mar

11 Urbandale

12 Indianola

13 Ankeny

14 Dubuque Senior

15 Iowa City, City high

16 Iowa City Liberty

17 Cedar Falls

18 Waukee

19 Norwalk

20 Iowa City West

Girls 3A

1 Ballard

2 Dallas Center-Grimes

3 Wahlert, Dubuque

4 Bishop Heelan

5 Solon

6 Pella

7 Davenport Assumption

8 Center Point-Urbana

9 Glenwood

10 Waverly-Shell Rock

11 Carlisle

12 Winterset

13 Decorah

14 Spencer

15 Harlan

16 Mount Vernon-Lisbon

17 North Polk

18 MOC-Floyd Valley

19 ADM, Adel

20 Marion

Girls 2A

1 Mid-Prairie

2 Williamsburg

3 Jesup

4 Tipton

5 Denver

6 Sibley-Ocheyedan

7 Unity Christian

8 Starmont

9 Cherokee

10 Roland Story

11 Davis County

12 Des Moines Christian

13 Okoboji

14 Dike-New Hartford

15 Danville

16 Chariton

17 WCKP

18 PCM

19 Pocahontas

20 George LR-CL

Girls 1A

1 South Winneshiek

2 Hudson

3 Pekin

4 Regina Iowa City

5 Logan Magnolia

6 Kee Lansing

7 Newman Mason City

8 Manson Northwest Webster

9 North Linn

10 ACGC

11 Earlham

12 St. Edmond Fort Dodge

13 Panorama

14 Sumner Fredricksburg

15 St. Albert Council Bluffs

16 Ridge View

17 Nashua Plainfield

18 West Fork

19 Cascade

20 Montezuma