First Team
7). Abigail Bass (Melissa)
Though she only raced two miles at UIL Championship meets, Bass's junior year left no doubts that she belongs in the top tier of the state's best cross country runners. Her fall season was split between 2 mile and 5k races, but the extra 1800 meters seemed only to play to her advantage.
Bass won her district and regional titles comfortably and then brought her UIL season to a flourish with a 10 second victory at the 4A State Cross Country Championship. She finished the cross country season with her two best performances over 5000 meters. She was seventh at the NXR South Regional, then proceeded to finish 63rd out of 296 of the nation's best at the Garmin RunningLane Championships.
Success at the longer race will come in handy as Melissa moves up to the 5A classification this year where she'll get her fair share of 5Ks as well as 5A and 6A girls to race.
Her track season showed no indication of decline. She won regional and state titles in the 1600 and 3200 and secured fantastic personal bests of 4:56 and 10:43. She ended her junior year at New Balance Nationals with a 13th place finish in the two mile championship race. Her time of 10:44 for the full two mile distance was an improvement on her 3200 meter personal best.
As the reigning 4A state champion and the fifth best returner in the NXR South Region, Bass appears to be primed to defend her state titles this fall and will be a formidable competitor at the south regional and national level.
The most impressive thing about Humphries is not any particular performance, personal best or event specialty. It is her range that makes her one of the state's premier athletes and it extends all the way from 800 meters on the track to 5000 on grass.
The best illustration of how good she is in cross country is that her 12th place finish at the 6A State Cross Country Championships could be described as a slight underperformance. The support for this claim arises from her performance at NXR South where she was fourth. Furthermore, her 68th place finish at the Garmin RunningLane Championships last December is far from subpar.
Although the 800 was the event she contested at Brooks PR, her success in that event didn't come at the expense of improving in the longer distances. In fact, her teammate Natalie Cook was the only reason she did not collect the full treble of gold medals at the state track meet.
She did defeat the state's best half-milers, milers, and 3200 runner at the state meet all in one day, except for one runner.
3.) Nicole Humphries (Flower Mound)
As part of a Flower Mound team that dominated the state last year, Humphries built an impressive list of individual accomplishments en route to winning team titles.
Last fall, Humphries was remarkably consistent and peaked at the right time. Her only finish outside of the top 10 came at the Woodbridge Cross Country Classic in California where she finished 19th in the famously competitive three mile race. At the Nike South Invitational, she won the girls' elite race by nearly 20 seconds over fellow top 10 finishers at the state meet. Her best race came one month after her triumph in The Woodlands when she finished fourth at the 6a state championship.
In the spring, Humphries' focus shifted to the 1600 and 800 meter distances. Though her 800 performances were not bad, it was in the 1600 where her season flourished. She never found herself off the podium in the event and her two best performances came in Austin seven weeks apart. In late March, she finished third at the Texas Relays in a race fit for championship season with a personal best of 4:49. She returned to Mike A. Myers Stadium in May where she narrowly claimed a bronze medal and completed a historic medal sweep for Flower Mound in the event.
This fall, Humphries will be the second highest returner from the 2021 6A State Cross Country Championship. With personal bests of 2:08, 4:49 and 10:5, she is fully prepared to compete for titles on every front through the entirety of her junior year.
In what was a difficult call to make between which twin to give the nod over the other, it looked like Nicole had a slight leg up last fall in the end. You can't go wrong with either Humphries.
Johnson enters her senior year as the most decorated individual having won state titles in Iowa as an underclassman along with some big performances last year here in Texas.
In her sophomore year, she won Iowa state titles in cross country and over the 3000 meter distance. Although she certainly came up against stiffer competition once she moved to Texas, she raised her game accordingly. Unfortunately for Johnson, her first year in Texas coincided with the peak of Natalie Cook. In that context, a bronze medal at the state cross country meet along with an NXR South Regional title is an exceptional return for her first season in the Lone Star State.
While the spring did not bring her the medals or times she might have hoped for, she still holds personal bests of 4:43 for 1500 meters and 9:46 for 3000 meters which are formidable times at any stage of high school distance running. With the top two finishers from last year's state meet having graduated, the fall of 2022 could well be Johnson's time to accomplish the rare feat of winning cross country titles in multiple states.
Aside from a 25th place finish at the Eastbay South Regional, Frankenberg never found herself outside of the top five in her sophomore cross country season.
At the Mcneil Invitational, she defeated a collection of the state's superstars including some of the biggest names in these rankings on her way to claiming a signature win for the season. Equally impressive to her win in Round Rock was a fourth place finish at the immensely competitive Woodbridge Classic in California where was only three seconds behind Flower Mound standout Natalie Cook. Her third place finish at the 5A State Cross Country Championship is more than respectable, but it was in the spring where Frankenberg ascended to the top of 5A and solidified her spot at the top of the preseason rankings.
From March to June, she excelled in every event available. The resume of her sophomore track season included gold medals, jaw dropping personal bests and consistently elite performances amidst a dense load of racing that extended into the summer. At the 5a State Track Championships, she was three tenths of a second shy of completing an unbelievable treble as she was edged out in the 800 meter final by Lovejoy's Kailey Littlefield.
Though she had to settle for two golds and a silver in Round Rock, her moment of redemption over 800 meters came at New Balance Nationals as she won the national title in 2:05. However, that achievement can not be fully appreciated without the knowledge that two days prior to her win in Philadelphia, she ran 4:38 for the full mile at the Brooks Pr Invitational in Seattle. Along with her 3200 personal best of 10:26, her wins on the track and proven ability on the grass make her an undeniable favorite for every major honor this fall.