Week 1 Class 3A Boys Team Top 10: Florida Cross Country Rankings

Florida Class 3A boys cross country team rankings, after opening weekend: August 21-22, 2026

3A produced the best boys team in Florida and the tightest logjam of any class, and it did both on the same weekend. Belen Jesuit scores 42 points in a 3A-only field against a second place of 190, and they did it with the defending state champion at home.

Behind them, four teams are covered by twelve points and eight teams are covered by 121, and none of them has been on the same course as most of the others. Ponte Vedra, Leon and Vanguard finish third, fourth and fifth inside three points. Read that as a tie, not an order.

As always this is data plus judgment, and we will miss somebody along the way. A (P) beside a team means it did not put five runners on a line this weekend and is entered on what its returners ran last November. How we sorted it all out is at the bottom for anyone who wants it. Races are not won until the kids have run. Enjoy.

The statewide lists: Week 1 boys team top 10 and Week 1 boys top 10. The 3A individuals are here. The other class team lists: 1A boys, 2A boys, 4A boys and 3A girls.

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1. Belen Jesuit — 42 points

Cecil Field. Five-man average 15:54.4, spread 1:17.0. Armando Cruz 15:06, Jack Michalak 15:47, Liam Salom 15:54, Nicholas Veloso 16:22, Dominic De Armas 16:23, with Davi Bodoh 16:31 and Santiago Muniz 16:51 behind them.

They are the No. 1 team in Florida in any class, and in a 3A-only field they score 42 against a second place of 190. Their fifth man comes home at 16:23, faster than the second runner on eleven of the other thirteen teams on this page. That is not a ranking, it is a different category of team.

And Marcelo Mantecon did not run. The defending 3A state champion at 15:03.3 — runner-up at the Brooks national championship, fourth at Nike Cross Nationals, and likely the top returner in the country — stayed home while sixteen Belen teammates raced, ten of them in the Elite race Cruz won. Belen's projection off its returning five was 15:47.3. They opened at 15:54.4 without the runner who makes that projection, which is to say the gap you see is the gap with their best athlete missing.

2. Bishop Kenny (Jacksonville) — 190 points — (P)

Thomas Milton 16:36.5, Ethan Reid 16:37.1, Brian Martinez 16:41.9, Quinn Mullaney 17:16.2, Dayne Kimball 17:17.2. Projected average 16:53.8, spread 0:40.7.

That spread is the story. It is the tightest returning five in 3A, eighteen seconds better than the next projection in the class, and it comes from five runners who have already done it at a state meet rather than from one August afternoon.

They did not enter a meet. On the boys' side August and November times run about even, so this is not a generous placement: it credits Bishop Kenny with no summer improvement and no incoming freshman while every team below them is stuck with exactly what it ran. Sixth in Florida overall. They are the team most likely to have moved and the team we know least about.

3. Ponte Vedra — 225 points

Spikes & Spurs. Converted average 16:55.6 — the best in this group of four — spread 1:53.6. Luke Ross came back at 15:37.1, then Colin Bovee 17:00.4, Logan Hunt 17:07.1, Jasper Graham 17:22.5, Aiden Killoran 17:30.7, with Liam Heffernan and Nathaniel Marciani a step behind.

Ross is our No. 4 individual in 3A and the sixth-fastest mark by any boy in Florida on the weekend, and then there is a 1:23 wait for the second scorer. Bovee through Killoran fits inside thirty seconds, so this is a team one runner closing on Ross away from second in the class.

Read third loosely, and here is exactly why. Spikes & Spurs is a course we cannot honestly price. The runners there who also ran the state meet disagree with each other by minutes, four of the fourteen of them are Ponte Vedra, and one of the four is Luke Ross. Take the course at face value and Ponte Vedra is ninth in 3A. Take it at the most generous reading and they are second. We use the same number here that the statewide list uses, and we say out loud that it is an estimate.

They ran forty boys and the depth behind the scoring five is real.

4. Leon — 226 points

Dueling Summits. Converted average 16:58.7, spread 1:45.1. Isaiah Renn 16:13.4, Carson Weiss 16:33.9, Asher McGrew 16:49.0, Andrew Barnes 17:18.5, Sam Ito 17:58.5, then Chase Sims and Henry Combs.

They ran twenty-one boys. Renn was the fastest 3A runner in the field at Dueling Summits, and the front three is legitimately the second-best front three in this class. The fifth man at 17:58.5 is what keeps them at 226 instead of somewhere near 170.

Their whole placement rides on a course only four returners let us measure. Push that number around inside its plausible range and Leon is anywhere from second to seventh in 3A. Somebody needs to get the Big Bend onto a course we can measure.

5. Vanguard (Ocala) — 228 points

Cecil Field, two points back. Average 16:59.0, spread 1:29.0. Trevor Berquist 16:31, Christopher Taylor 16:43, Lachlan Bryniarski 16:45, Jacob Rogers 16:56, Aidan Bone 18:00, then Cooper Gumpert 18:01.

Four runners inside 16:56 and a sixty-four-second hole to the fifth. The front four is better than Leon's and better than Ponte Vedra's; the fifth man is the whole difference. Bone and Gumpert ran within a second of each other, so this is not one boy having a bad day — it is where the roster currently ends.

Eleventh in the state, and the only team in this three-way tie whose number came out of a race against other ranked 3A teams: they were in the same Cecil field as Fort Myers, Fleming Island and Chiles and finished ahead of all three. Belen was in that race too, and beat everybody.

6. Fort Myers — 237 points

Cecil Field. Average 17:01.2, spread 1:23.0. Reed Hagen 16:19, Trae Britton 16:20, Noah Lefko 17:06, Elijah Brown 17:39, Brock Jackson 17:42, Ben Moss 18:03.

Hagen and Britton finished one second apart, the closest front pair of any 3A team that raced. Then a forty-six-second gap. Their spread is the second-tightest of the eight teams in this top fourteen that actually ran, behind only Belen's, which is the argument for them over the two or three teams above: no single runner is carrying the score.

Twelve points cover third through sixth here, and Vanguard finished ahead of them in the same Cecil race on the same morning. That is the only head-to-head evidence anywhere in this group.

7. Tavares — 280 points

Jim Ryun, at Holloway Park, on the most reliable non-Cecil conversion available. Average 17:06.9, spread 2:16.1. Liam Ilea 16:05.7, Nicholas Alvarez 16:58.9, Navid Lozano 17:01.4, Emiliano Lozano 17:06.9, then Tahjier Neal 18:21.8, Eric Chen 18:22.7 and Jonah Myers 18:23.0.

The Lozano brothers five and a half seconds apart, a front four inside 17:07, and then a 1:15 cliff. Their sixth and seventh men are within a second and a bit of the fifth, so the pack is there. It is just a minute and a quarter behind where it needs to be. Fix that and Tavares is in the scrum above.

8. Fleming Island — 307 points

Cecil Field. Average 17:12.4, spread 2:10.0. JP Strombeck 15:58, Luke Janke 16:43, Andrew Lou 17:13, Ryder Muyres 18:00, Isaac Garrison 18:08, Jack Loehr 18:13, Jude Harmer 18:35.

Strombeck is one of eight 3A boys who came home under 16:00 this weekend and our No. 10 individual in the class. Behind him the team steps down in thirty- to forty-seven-second increments, and the 2:10 spread is what a good front three and an ordinary back half looks like on a scoresheet.

They put sixteen boys on the line at Cecil across two sections. The five-through-seven bunching inside twenty-seven seconds is where next month's improvement comes from.

9. Chiles — 311 points

Cecil Field, four points behind Fleming Island. Average 17:13.2, spread 2:30.0. Jonathan Kiros 15:47, Jack Nottingham 16:52, Emerson Gandy 17:26, Noah Olson 17:44, Camp Andrews 18:17, Lowell Mick 18:54.

Kiros came home at 15:47, level with Belen's Jack Michalak for the fourth-fastest 3A mark of the weekend, and he is our No. 7 individual in the class. Behind him Chiles has the second-widest spread in this top ten. Their four returners projected to a 17:01.1 average and they raced to 17:13.2, so unlike the other Tallahassee team above them they did not gain on their own baseline.

Chiles and Fleming Island raced each other at Cecil and Fleming Island won it. Four points is inside the noise of one runner's day.

10. Lincoln (Tallahassee) — 358 points — (P)

Trent Parsons 16:52.2, Bryan Duff 17:29.4, Emari Thomas 17:36.0, Stokes Bryan 17:46.7, Noah Holly 17:50.6, with Thoren Knispel 18:30.1 sixth. Projected average 17:31.0, spread 0:58.4.

The second-tightest projection in the class behind Bishop Kenny, and no front-runner at all — Parsons is the only Lincoln man under 17:29 and he is 39th in this virtual field. That is a pack team, and pack teams are the ones a projection underrates most, because it prices five returning athletes at exactly what they were and nothing more.

Two Tallahassee 3A programs at fourth and tenth, plus Chiles at ninth, means the region meet in that corner of the state is going to be the best race nobody outside Leon County watches.

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Just missed

11. Fort Walton Beach, 373 — Dueling Summits, average 17:36.8, and a 0:22.9 spread, the tightest five-man pack on any of our four boys class pages. Nolan Ibsen 17:27.7 through Connor White 17:50.6. No team here is more likely to be underrated, and none is more exposed to that four-runner Dueling Summits number: push it and they are eighth.

12. St. Augustine, 407 — Cecil Field, 17:34.4 average, 1:43 spread. Elijah Parkinson 16:32 and Keanan DiPrimo 16:54 are a real front two; the gap to third is sixty-nine seconds.

13. Rockledge, 426 — Cecil Field, and the widest spread in this top fourteen at 2:50.0. Noah Childrey 15:56 and Brody Johnson 16:15 are the best front pair in 3A outside Belen and their fifth man ran 18:46. Their average (17:29.2) is better than St. Augustine's and they still rank behind them.

14. East Lake, 457 — Cecil Field, 17:40.8, spread 2:42. Three Houks — Truman 16:25, Theodore 16:33, Winston 17:21 — and then 1:37 of daylight.

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How we ranked them

• Courses do not all run the same speed, so we do not compare raw times. Cecil Field is the yardstick. For the other meets we look at boys who raced both that course and last year's state meet, and use the gap to work out what a time was worth.
• Then every 3A team in Florida goes into one virtual race, scored the normal way: five count, six and seven displace, five finishers required, low score wins. This is a 3A-only field, so the point totals do not compare to the statewide list — only the order does.
• Fifty-two 3A boys teams scored. Six are entered on projection and marked (P). On the boys' side August and November times run about even, so a projected team carries its state marks forward essentially unchanged — no summer credit, no incoming freshman — while a team that raced is stuck with what it ran in the heat.
• Two of these placements rest on courses we cannot honestly price, and both are in the tie at the top. Spikes & Spurs, which carries Ponte Vedra, has a thin overlap with the state meet and the runners in it disagree by minutes — four of them are Ponte Vedra and one is Luke Ross. Dueling Summits, which carries Leon and Fort Walton Beach, rests on four runners. Ponte Vedra is anywhere from second to ninth in this class depending on how you read its course, and Leon anywhere from second to seventh. Both belong in the top ten under every reading. Neither placement is a measurement.
• Eight of the fourteen teams here ran Cecil Field, so those eight are ordered by an actual race against each other. Everything else is a conversion.
• Class is the 2026-27 FHSAA classification. A school only appears in our returner data if it has a returning runner from the 2025 state meet, so a program that missed state is invisible to us until we place it by hand from the FHSAA document. Leon is exactly that case and had to be supplied by hand; without it they would not be on this page at all.
• Georgia and Tennessee runners at Cecil Field and Dueling Summits are left out.

The order below Belen should be read as a bracket, not a list. Week 2 is when a few of these get answered. Check back for the updated top ten, and the full opening weekend recap with all eleven meets is right here.