Great Meadows Madness

The Top 15 Moments at VHSL XC State Championship in the MileStat.com Era


After a hectic but exciting week of Regional meets the fields are set and the picture is perhaps clearer than ever thanks to extraordinary seasonal coverage. However, as runners and fans both know, when the blast of the shotgun rings through the crisp air in The Plains on Saturday, there will be upsets. Why? Because there always is.

An upset in Cross Country seems to be perhaps even more exciting than in other sports. This is probably because Cross Country would seem to be more predictable. Numbers don’t lie. Times and performances can be compared for a pretty clear picture. However, this isn’t track. Times vary based on weather and course conditions. People waste away breath defending teams and runner and arguing how to convert one course’s time to another. Even more so, some teams are just that good at achieving the perfect peak where all their runners come together on the same day for a perfect team performance. There is also the opposite, where some teams have the reputation and history of blowing up always at the wrong time.

What does all this have to do with anything? Upsets have been a huge part of the most memorable moments in recent state meet history. Dominant performances have too. The following list is not rankings the best performances or events, just the most memorable ones. Of course this list was nearly impossible to come up with. How can anyone narrow it down to 15 moments? It was hard and I’m sure the message boards will be buzzing with people’s own countdowns, thoughts, feelings, arguments etc.

So here’s how it works. While the participants for this weekend’s State Championship daydream during class lectures and walk the halls with their teammates talking about this Saturday, Milestat.com will be counting down the top 15 moments at the VHSL XC State Championship since we started our coverage back in 2000.

Monday we will release #15-12, Tuesday 11-8, Wednesday 7-4, and Thursday 3-1. Originally we were going to let the suspense of #1 build until Friday but we realized many fans and teams will be traveling that day and won’t be on the internet. How hard was it again to come up with this list? Well, it was originally supposed to only be a Top 10 list, however, when going through results and articles I realized that would be flat out impossible.

So I hope this provides some stress relieving entertainment and perhaps some fond memories for those of you who witnessed these events. Good luck to all runners this weekend. Remember to get your sleep!