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It is still early in the season but any thoughts on which teams look to be formidable so far?

For the girls side, I'd personally put Murray, Johnson traditional, and North Oldham at the top of the teams to beat list, based solely on the performances listed on the ms leaderboard. It's really difficult to gage the middle school state meet based off the leaderboard though, because all of the studs who are running high school meets aren't recorded on the middle school individual rankings. For example, out here in northern kentucky, ryle has a seventh grader who recently ran a 2:24 800 and another 8th grader who went 5:37 in the 1600, but no one really knows about them because they've solely been running high school meets and have been flying under the middle school radar.

The boys front runners, to me, seem to be North Oldham, Johnson Traditional, and Bowling Green. But seriously, these are only premature guesses at this point.

@CamelCoach23

I have been putting up combined MS and HS rankings links weekly, so no one is hidden unless their grade is not attached to them

ky.milesplit.com/articles/83495-ky-outdoor-hs-ms-l....

@sideline_coach
I wouldn't be too sure that many middle school enthusiasts outside of you and I really do know much about these two girls. Ryle middle school, from what I've seen, doesn't attend the middle school state meet. They didn't last year. So, they haven't really got a chance to run outside the northern kentucky area in a middle school track meet. That's why I personally think they're a bit unheard of, because unless you look at their grade level, I don't know how else you would know they're not in high school.
And, the whole Ryle MS not going to state brings about another point as to why it is hard to gage the middle school state meet. You don't know which teams make the trip and which teams don't. I know that in my region, more than half the teams don't make the trip and rather end their seasons at region. This may be even more so the case this year, with MS state being pushed back.

I simulated these, they are real rough. There is no limit on an event, so if the team has four kids in the top 8 in PV they are scoring all four.

Also these only take into account MS meets


Girls

1. Murray Middle School 85.75
2. Johnson Traditional Middle School 53
3. Campbell County Middle School 32
3. Fort Campbell Middle 32
5. St. Gabriel 29
6. Cooper Middle 25.25
7. Scott County Middle School 24.75
8. Jessie Clark Middle School 24
9. Our Lady of Lourdes 23
10. Bowling Green Junior High School 21

Boys

1. Jessie Clark Middle School 57
2. Murray Middle School 55.75
3. Bowling Green Junior High School 54
4. Henry County Middle School 45
5. Johnson Traditional Middle School 35
6. Scott County Middle School 32.25
7. North Oldham Middle School 30
7. Ryle Middle Track 30
9. South Warren Middle School 25.25
10. Morton Middle School 19
10. Walton Verona 19
10. Paducah Middle School 19

Beechwood 8th grader ran 4:42, 2:08, and a :55 split in 4x400 this sat at Tates Creek

@nkytrackguy

Two words: GRANT BIRINDELLI

@quickslick I typically have the honor of coming in second to Grant, haha.

Highlands MS team is a good example of why it is hard to predict who the top teams are. Highlands has a huge team numbers wise this year and has had an A,B,and C team at some of the meets. Every meet the coach is giving different kids a try in different events. I do not believe he is worried about winning the meets, but exposing as many kids to the sport as possible, and building for the future. Highlands has some new kids this year who are going to be very good varsity runners, this year and years coming. Most of the top MS athletes are used very little as opposed to teams such as Cooper who use the top athletes a lot in both MS and HS (I am not saying there is anything wrong with doing that). I do not believe Highlands has won any meet in MS this year,but if they used all their top athletes in all the events,I feel the could beat all NK teams. And as for somebody sneeking up and surprising everyone at MS state; with this website that will not happen. It is very easy to keep up with kids across the state.

I think this year will be interesting to watch. With the middle school state being held after the high school state meet it will be interesting to see who still goes to the middle school meet or just turns it off. Since we are talking mostly about distance runners here it should make it interesting from a runner/ coach approach. I think in the past you could just use the middle school state meet as just a meet before high school state if you were running both. Now you are having to peak for high school regions, state, and than one week later run middle school state. Now we could see some great times this way out of our middle school distance runners not that they are not already running great. Or we could see some runners fall short. The last few years I have seen plenty of great middle school runners just blowup at high school state after running great at middle school. So in terms of horse racing this year they will be dropping down in class overall so we might see some good times. So for me it would be hard to tell which team is going to win. However, I would most likly look for teams that are solid in sprints/fields and go from there, after that look for teams that don't have a large amount of individuals doing high school stuff at top level and go with fresh and with the goal of middle school state as the end to their season.

@jonathan
Is there any reason why if a school has multiple runners in the top 8 why only one runner per school can participate in an event? There are teams that have multiple athletes who are in the top 8 of their event. It seems like those kids are penalized for being very good just not the best in their school.

@hilldaddy1

You are limited to one per event per school because there is no qualification procedure for the meet. Any school that wants to enter can enter, and the sheer number of entries precludes more than one per event per school. The meet already takes most of a full day. Doubling the entries would be untenable. The only way to get there is to limit who can enter either by performance-based qualification or regional-based competitive qualifying meets.

hilldaddy1

@jonathan
Is there any reason why if a school has multiple runners in the top 8 why only one runner per school can participate in an event? There are teams that have multiple athletes who are in the top 8 of their event. It seems like those kids are penalized for being very good just not the best in their school.

@hilldaddy1

Go to the MS state meet one time and you will know exactly why 1 competitor per event. It's a (well run) mad house. I think a popular term is organized chaos!

@DannoKanno I have been to the last 3 state meets with runner(s) in the 1st, middle, and last events. Of course, organized chaos is the proper description but...its a shame for kids to be so talented, work so very hard and still not be able to compete because of their school being blessed with ability. I guess that is what makes good relay teams. It is also true that by the end of the state meet, I would probably like to be at home recovering.