Last week marked the official start of league competition. As expected, the results from those meets — along with a handful of early invitationals — shook up our preseason top-10 rankings. With nearly a month of racing now in the books, there’s been plenty of movement across the board.
This past weekend, Cumberland showed some early-season strength at the Manchester Invitational where the Clippers finished third and their top five averaged 20:17 on the very difficult layout of Derryfield Park. Among the quintet was a promising newcomer and ninth-grader Natalie Crawford, who was the Clippers’ No. 5. Cranston West pulled off a big win over East Greenwich. The Avengers were without their No. 1, sophomore Ali Walsh. Still, you can’t ignore the Falcons’ impressive score of 18-38 against EG, despite its absence of Walsh. As to be expected, North Kingsown swept Southern Division rivals West Warwick and South Kingstown. But missing from the win was last year’s state runner-up Abbie Tighe, who has not competed yet this season. The Skippers were also without Maura Whitney, another valuable varsity member. They’ll need both to contend with the state’s best. La Salle Academy is off to a great start with plenty of depth and promsing underclassmen, In the Rams’ first dual meet of the season, just 1:22 separated its top nine with three sophomores and a ninth-grader among that group.
Without further ado, here’s Week 1 of our New Balance Girls’ Power Rankings. Previous rankings are shown in parentheses, while new additions are labeled as NR. If nothing follows a team’s name, that means there was no movement from the previous week.
- La Salle Academy (2)
- Cumberland (3)
- North Kingstown (1)
- Cranston West (NR)
- Barrington
- East Greenwich (4)
- North Smithfield (9)
- Moses Brown (6)
- Prout (8)
- Smithfield
Honorable Mention: Coventry, Burrillville, Lincoln
