PROJECT
29
Project 29 — Washington Incoming Freshman Cross Country Rankings 2026, Class of 2030
Washington's Incoming Freshman Class · Cross Country Intelligence
This cycle's subject: Class of 2030 · Fall 2026 Season
This is the wash, as promised last cycle. Every pace-hold projection, every middle school mark, every Under Verification entry with no confirmed high school landing spot — retired. It's officially 5,000-meter season, and this file now runs on one rule: a real, confirmed high school varsity 5K, from a confirmed Grade 9 athlete, or the athlete isn't on the board. No projections, no pace-holds, no distance conversions standing in for a race that hasn't happened yet. The six-board middle school architecture — 1.5 mile, 2,575m, 2 mile, 3,000m, 4,000m, and the old Under Verification queue — did its job: it surfaced athletes and leagues no standard ranking had, and roughly two-thirds of the names on it have now run a real high school 5K and moved over here on their own merit. The rest — the ones who haven't raced a real 5K yet — are simply off the board until they do. Two source tiers still apply. Secondhand reports carry "Reported — Pending Verification" until cross-checked against Athletic.net. A direct official results sheet — full team scoring, splits, varsity and JV — carries "Verified — Grade 9 (Confirmed HS Freshman)" instead. Course and conditions still swing a time significantly (see: The Mook Effect), so read every number as directional, not absolute. Spot something wrong or missing? Help Improve Project 29.
PRIMARY
SUBJECTS
One athlete per gender, the outright #1 on the newly-washed 5,000M board. No pace-hold, no projection — these are real varsity 5K results, confirmed against official results sheets.
TEEPLES
"This file's #1 name since the first cycle, off a middle school 2-mile mark from a league nobody else had found. He's now confirmed it twice on a real course — 15:51.80 at the WSU Cougar Classic, then 16:08.10 in a second varsity start at Fort Steilacoom. The pace-hold model is retired; the athlete it was built around is still #1."
ZENER
"Won her Wesco League opener outright on this file's now-retired 2-mile board, then confirmed it with a real varsity 5K at South Whidbey. Then the Nike circuit happened — 17:52.0 at Bob Firman in Spokane, 82 seconds faster than her own opener, and the new outright #1 on this board by a wide margin."
THE
GRID
One board. One distance. The middle school architecture — six boards, six distances, pace-hold projections throughout — is retired as of this cycle. What's left is the only number that was ever going to matter: a real, verified high school 5,000-meter result.
HELP IMPROVE
PROJECT 29
Middle school cross country results are often spread across district websites, timing companies, club events, and archived PDFs. While every effort has been made to build the most complete incoming freshman rankings possible, additional results and corrections are always welcome.
If you have verified performances, missing athletes, corrected schools, race results, or updates, please reach out directly.
Project 29 is intended to be a living document that improves with help from athletes, parents, coaches, and the running community.
russell@russell-moore.com
This file spent its first two cycles building a scaffold: six middle school boards, six distances, a pace-hold model that projected a real 5K out of a verified mark at some other distance. That scaffold did its job — it surfaced entire leagues, entire programs, and athletes no standard incoming-freshman ranking had touched. But a projection was always a placeholder for the thing it was standing in for.
That thing has now happened. A full slate of September invitationals — The Mook, PLU, Wenatchee, South Whidbey, Bellevue, and Fort Steilacoom — put most of this file's tracked names on a real 5K course. The scaffold comes down this cycle. What's left is the board that was always the point.
The pace-hold model got one real, clean test before retirement: Elijah Teeples. MS mark projected 15:47.6. HS opener pace-held to roughly 16:00. Actual 5K: 15:51.80 — four seconds off the original projection, from a model built entirely off a middle school 2-mile time. That's about as good as a projection is ever going to get, and it's the right note to retire the model on.
Not every projection held up that well — some of the biggest moves this cycle came from athletes whose middle school marks never made it onto a board at all. Dahlia Zener is the clearest case now: a verified 2-mile HS opener, then a trip to the Nike circuit that dropped her time by well over a minute and put her outright #1.
Course and conditions didn't stop mattering just because the boards got simpler. Russell Moore's own course-variance research — the "Mook Effect" — found top runners posting times averaging over a minute faster on a single downhill-oriented course compared to their other races that same season. Several names on this board now carry two, three, even four verified 5K results from different courses, and the gap between them tells the same story: read every rank here as a snapshot of the season so far, not a settled verdict.
This cycle's biggest single input is the Nike circuit — the Bob Firman Invitational in Boise and Nike Portland XC, both Sep 26. Nineteen WA freshman girls posted marks at one or the other, and the field is deep enough that it reshuffled the top of this board outright: Dahlia Zener takes over #1, and more than a dozen other names post their season-best mark of the year at one of the two meets. Read these results in context — a circuit-level field at elevation or on a fast course is not the same test as a Tuesday dual, and several athletes on this board now carry a Nike mark alongside a much slower in-state dual mark from the same month.
PRESEASON
SIGNALS
TEEPLES
ZENER
LENTZ
