Conner Quinn

First of all I'd just like to say I didn't realize this guy's name was spelled with an e for a very long time so I am sorry to him for spelling his name wrong all these years.

So here we go why is Conner Quinn ranked the spot he is. Well quite frankly, I think you can make an arguement Quinn is too high on my list or too low on my list, so therefore I put him in the middle of those two arguements.

Argument for a higher rank:
Quinn trains with Sam Hibbs. Quinn has raced within 5-10 seconds of Hibbs every race this season. Hibbs is the favorite for the state championship. Therefore, Quinn is a top 5 guy. Very logical arguement. He was 20th at States a year ago and ran the fastest out of all the sophomore's at states (not 100% positive on that stat but I'm pretty sure that's right). He is starting out much faster than he did last season time wise and running times fairly similar to Hibbs at this point last year and Hibbs took 7th in what I consider a deeper field than this years at the AAA level.

Pretty solid stats, pretty solid argument.

Argument for a lower rank:
Quinn trains and runs close to Sam Hibbs but he still has lost to a bunch of other runners. At Prestates he lost Connor Harriman, at Viking he lost to Max Norris, at Briarwood he ran a slower time than Dan Savage and Mike Billotta yet all those guys are fairly far behind him on the list. Now he beat Savage and Bilotta at Pre States and they were in the faster race at Briarwood with guys to chase but Quinn didn't win his race at Briarwood either. Meanwhile Brendan Shearn at 7 just one spot ahead of Quinn is undefeated this season fairly convincingly winning his two races with relative ease. Carlisle was the biggest meet of the year last year and although it clearly wasn't this year, he still won. And PTXC featured the likes of Wade Endress, Ed Schrom, and Logan Mohn a year ago so that meet was solid before as well. Shearn also ran faster on the track by a bunch (somewhere in the low 9:20s and mid to low 4:20s with a couple state medals). Quinn may be close to Hibbs, but he still has let other guys slip in between the two of them. And as I said before, I'm not extremely high on Hibbs compared to other guys. Sure I think he will win states, but that's just because I haven't found another guy who I think has the talent do it. Dustin Wilson is still not in the PIAA last time I checked so I'm out of options for guys who have proven they are legitimately better than Hibbs.

Overall, I opted more towards the second argument than the first and thus Quinn falls perhaps a little farther than he is on most's rankings.

Hey it could have been worse for the guy, after Paul Short Max Norris may also be ahead of him.

-train