Belen Jesuit (Miami)

Cecil Field. Five-man average of 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 at 16:31 and Santiago Muniz at 16:51 behind them.

They are the No. 1 team in Florida in any class, and in a 3A-only field they score 42 points against a second-place 190. Their fifth man converts to 16:23, faster than the No. 2 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 — the fastest returning time by any boy in any class in Florida — stayed home while sixteen Belen teammates raced, ten of them in the Cecil 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.

Cecil Field. 15:54.4 average, the only team in Florida under 16:00, inside a 1:17 spread. Cruz 15:06, Michalak 15:47, Liam Salom 15:54, Nicholas Veloso 16:22, Dominic De Armas 16:23. They won the Cecil Field team title 75-158.

Marcelo Mantecon did not run, and here is what that is worth in this format: Belen's returning five, with Mantecon in it, projects to a 15:47.3 average and a score of 93 — better than the 108 they earned on the track. They are ranked on what they ran, which understates them, and they are still 61 points clear of the field.

Our preseason projection had Belen's 3A team score at 20 points, the lowest of any boys team in Florida in any class. Nothing about August moved it.

Projected five-man average 11:08.7, spread 1:40.3.
Aiden M. Cruz 10:19.3, Jake Rubiera 10:27.6, Jacob Jasinski 11:20.0, Jose Sosa 11:36.9, Vittorio Stasi 11:59.6.

The feeder system behind the state's best high school program returns a 10:19/10:27 front pair of 7th graders. The Wolverine pipeline is not slowing down.