Ed’s Ramblings - The Best in Cross Country

2025 South Carolina cross country

Nov 07, 2025

I hope the first article made some sense. I will give some examples of each before I proceed to name 11-25 in each of the categories.

Read the first column here

Read more of Ed's Ramblings

SCHOOL RANKING BY BEST TIME

This method uses the best seven times run by every/any athlete in the schools history of our South Carolina State Cross Country Championships. This could take into account the same athlete in multiple years. Then all of the athletes from every school are ranked by time, given a place as if they ran a cross country meet and then the team is scored.

As an example I will use Eastside athletes. Spain Vaughan ran 15:13.65 and placed second in the 2020 SCHSL State 4A Meet and placed third in the 2019 meet with a time of 15:27.60. Alan Richardson's time of 15:31 won the 1988 State Championships the year after his second place finish in 1897 in a time of 15:39. Mike Johnson ran 15:39 and was second in the 1990 meet, Noah White was second with 15:42 in 2017, and Jonathan Fox was sixth in 2019 with a time of 15:43.82. After ranking these runners with all of the rest of a school's top seven times, they placed 15, 35, 43, 67, 68, 87, and 98 respectively for a team total (top five) of 228.

Then all of these team scores are ranked and here are places 11-25 for the boys and girls.

Next week I will share the top 10 in each of these categories and my choices for the best program and best team in South Carolina Cross Country.

Boys Top 7 Times			Girls Top 7 Times
11	Irmo	454	11	Summerville	431
12	Spring Valley	473	12	Hilton Head	455
13	Spartanburg	485	13	James Island	463
14	JL Mann	563	14	TL Hanna	516
15	Boiling Springs	578	15	Byrnes	542
16	Wade Hampton-G	623	16	Dorman	549
17	TL Hanna	636	17	AC Flora	568
18	Dorman	650	18	Spartanburg	610
19	Greer	664	19	Eastside	630
20	Academic Magnet	693	20	Seneca	641
21	Fort Mill	723	21	Dutch Fork	746
22	Rock Hill	796	22	Airport	752
23	Northwestern	804	23	Lexington	779
24	Byrnes	872	24	Stratford	822
25	Greer Middle	886	25	Greenville	855

SCHOOL RANKING BY BEST ATHLETES

This method assumes that the best seven athletes from each school in their history of the state cross country meet all show up on the same day and run their best state meet performance.

This eliminates an athlete being used multiple times. For example: Spain Vaughan's third place in 2019 and Alan Richardson's second place finish in 1988 are eliminated and we add Dann Lane's third place 15:57 and Grant Wilson's 15:48.79. Ranking these seven with all the rest gives us overall places of 14, 34, 52, 67, 74, 100, and 143 for a team score of 241.

Here are the rankings for 11-25 in this category.

Boys Top 7 Athletes			Girls Top 7 Athletes
11	Boiling Springs	458	11	Eastside	464
12	Wren	480	12	St. Josephs	471
13	Spartanburg	508	13	T.L. Hanna	550
14	Wade Hampton-G	541	14	Irmo	574
15	JL Mann	548	15	Dutch Fork	579
16	TL Hanna	603	16	Lexington	596
17	Rock Hill	622	17	Spartanburg	645
18	Dorman	625	18	Nation Ford	680
19	Dutch Fork	752	19	Wando	704
20	Fort Mill	788	20	AC Flora	708
21	Riverside	801	21	Northwestern	720
22	Northwestern	807	22	James Island	767
22	Hillcrest	808	23	Stratford	806
24	Greer Middle	836	24	Wren	809
25	Nation Ford	872	25	Greenville	853

SCHOOL RANKING BY NUMBER OF TEAM SCORES (STATE MEET APPEARANCES)

In my previous article I label this next ranking as Number of Team Scores. I put this data in the article as Number of State Meet appearances to help you make predictions. This data shows the number of times a school had a team score in the state championships.

Here is the data again.

BOYS 1970-2024			GIRLS 1977-2024
Rank	School	#	Rank	School	#
1	Spring Valley	48	1	Summerville	44
2	Eastside	46	2	Irmo	43
3	Christ Church	44	3	Mauldin	42
4	Northwestern	43	4	Chapin	40
5	Spartanburg	42	4	Lexington	40
5	Summerville	42	6	Daniel	38
7	AC Flora	41	6	Eastside	38
7	Chapin	41	6	Riverside	38
9	Daniel	40	9	Hilton Head	37
9	Hilton Head	40	10	Pelion	35
11	Irmo	39	10	Spartanburg	35
12	JL Mann	38	10	Spring Valley	35
12	Pelion	38	10	Stratford	35
14	Dreher	37	14	Dreher	34
14	Lexington	37	15	AC Flora	33
14	Liberty	37	15	Christ Church	33
14	TL Hanna	37	15	Fort Mill	33
14	Wade Hampton-G	37	15	Northwestern	33
19	Riverside	36	15	TL Hanna	33
19	Wando	36	15	Wando	33
19	West Florence	36	15	Wren	33
22	Stratford	35	22	JL Mann	32
23	Broome	32	23	Walhalla	31
23	Dorman	32	24	Waccamaw	30
23	Seneca	32	25	Dutch Fork	29
			25	Pendleton	29

SCHOOL RANKING BY AVERAGE TEAM PLACE

In the next category, I took the total of all of a team's paces in the state cross country meet, added them together and divided by the number of team scores (above number). For example Eastside's boys placed 12, 15, 16, 17, 20 and 23 once, third twice, ninth three times, 8, 6, 5 and first four times each, fourth five times, seventh seven times and second 10 times. Adding all of these gives a total of 297. Divide this by 46 and you get Eastside's average team place of 6.46, good for 24th on this list. Below are places 11-25 of this ranking.

Boys Average of Place			Girls Average of Place
Tie for 10th			11	Dorman	5.07
12	Spartanburg	5.12	12	Bridges Prep	5.33
13	Riverside	5.14	13	Spartanburg	5.34
14	May River	5.29	14	Chapin	5.43
15	Catawba Ridge	5.50	15	May River	5.44
16	Hilton Head	5.55	16	Christ Church	5.55
17	Gaffney	5.67	17	Greenville	5.92
18	Daniel	5.75	18	North Charleston	6.00
19	Porter-Gaud	5.90	19	Eastside	6.42
20	Irmo	6.23	20	Hampton County	6.50
21	Pendleton	6.25	21	Brashier	6.53
22	Southside Christian	6.32	22	Hilton Head	6.62
23	Christ Church	6.39	23	Fort Mill	6.79
24	Eastside	6.46	24	Belton-Honea Path	6.86
25	Powdersville	6.67	25	Pelion	6.89

SCHOOL RANKING BY AVERAGE TEAM POINTS

The next ranking takes each team's team score for all of their places in the S.C. State Cross Country Meet as above, but using points instead of places and divided by their number of state meet scores. I will not list all of Eastside's scores for each meet but the total is 8,513 points. Divided by 46 and our average team score is 185.07. Here are 11-25.

Boys Average of Points Scored			Girls Average of Points Scored
11	Brashier	144.75	11	Christ Church	158.58
12	Riverside	151.75	12	Spartanburg	163.34
13	Spartanburg	154.67	13	May River	169.44
14	Gaffney	158.56	14	Dorman	169.57
15	Catawba Ridge	160.17	15	Chapin	170.90
16	Southside Christian	162.84	16	Bridges Prep	174.00
17	Dorman	169.53	17	North Charleston	174.50
18	Porter-Gaud	170.90	18	Southside Christian	177.53
19	Hilton Head	172.90	19	Greenville	181.92
20	Daniel	179.58	20	Riverwalk Academy	186.50
21	Irmo	183.18	21	Eastside	187.66
22	Christ Church	184.64	22	Hilton Head	188.32
23	Eastside	185.07	23	Hampton County	190.50
24	Pendleton	194.75	24	Brashier	192.93
25	Academic Magnet	197.90	25	Fort Mill	193.73

SCHOOL RANKING BY TRACK TEAM SCORING

The last category used to determine the best program uses track scoring to rank the teams. I went through every state meet and assigned points for the top eight places like the scoring in a track meet. In large meets, first place gets 10 points, second gets eight, third 6 and 5,4,3, 2 and 1 for the remainder. The number of top eight places in the state meet are in the previous article. Below are places 11-25 in this ranking.

Boys Top 8 Track Scoring			Girls Top 8 Track Scoring
11	Spring Valley	128	11	Bishop England	134
12	Academic Magnet	127	12	Summerville	133
13	Northwestern	124	12	St. Josephs	133
14	Central	123	14	Dorman	128
15	Mauldin	116	15	JL Mann	124
16	TL Hanna	115	16	Pelion	120
17	Pendleton	113	17	Fort Mill	118
17	Fort Mill	113	18	Waccamaw	113
17	Greer Middle	113	19	Spring Valley	112
20	Wando	106	20	Lexington	106
21	St. Josephs	105	21	Greer Middle	104
22	Wren	101	22	Greenville	97
23	Sumter	98	23	Wade Hampton-G	85
24	Summerville	95	24	Wren	83
25	Broome	94	25	Wando	80

TEAM RANKING BY TEAM TIMES

Finally, I will show you the only data I could think of to determine the best team in the State Championships over the entire history of the meet. I went through every state meet race and added the top five times for every team that has a team score. Below are places 11-25 of this ranking. Please notice that the times are in seconds and I did not convert them back. (Excel does not rank the : in the time very well).

Boys Team Times				Girls Team Times
Rank	School	Year	Time (seconds)	Rank	School	Year	Time (seconds)
11	Dorman	2020	4860.11	11	Hilton Head	2014	5760.94
12	Greer	2019	4865.75	12	Dorman	2018	5768.05
13	Eastside	1988	4870	13	TL Hanna	1993	5773.00
14	Spartanburg	1984	4872	14	Hilton Head	2015	5788.00
15	Dorman	2023	4874.87	15	JL Mann	2021	5789.27
16	Wando	2014	4879.55	16	Lexington	2020	5798.08
17	Hilton Head	2012	4880.16	17	Hilton Head	2017	5802.00
18	Fort Mill	2006	4884	18	Northwestern	2003	5802.90
19	Spartanburg	1991	4884	19	Hilton Head	2009	5812.80
20	Lexington	2019	4886.12	20	Maudlin	2007	5813.00
21	Fort Mill	2020	4886.62	21	Wando	2011	5816.00
22	TL Hanna	2019	4886.8	22	Fort Mill	2023	5817.53
23	Dorman	2019	4891.22	23	JL Mann	2019	5822.24
24	Spartanburg	1985	4893	24	James Island	2021	5823.18
25	Spring Valley	2003	4893.6	25	Dorman	2010	5826.00

Next week I will share the top 10 in each of these categories and my choices for the best program and best team in South Carolina Cross Country.

Guest column by Ed Boehmke, coached for 38 years in South Carolina.

These views of the guest column are solely of the writer and not of MileSplit SC. Read more of Boehmke's ramblings at https://sc.milesplit.com/authors/695.