Eastwood's Luke Cruz crosses the finish line at the 2023 UIL 6A state meet
Making predictions and trying to rank teams heading into a season is never the easiest thing to do. Whether it be trying to factor in the impact of graduating seniors or projecting the improvement of individual runners, making rankings without any races taking place is an enjoyably difficult challenge.
Naturally in a process that contains such ambiguity, you're bound to miss a few teams that come out of the gates and surprise you. One team that comes to mind for me is last year's McKinney Boyd team who came into the season unranked and ended up finishing third at the state meet.
These teams are often hard to spot for one reason or another, and based on the way the 2024 season has started it looks like we have another one on our hands.
Unlike last year's McKinney Boyd team, El Paso Eastwood has long been a prevelantly successful force across the 5A and 6A divisions.
Whether it be their pension for consistently being one of the best out of El Paso, or the individual talent they routinely produce, Eastwood is a name we're used to seeing in the conversation at the state meet.
That said, they were left out of my preseason rankings because I found their progression hard to track on paper heading into this season.
Aidan Danny Torres
Yes, they return the likes of Aidan Danny Torres, one of the state's top individual runners and a contender for the state title, but I found their depth hard to track compared to other teams in contention for the list.
The most recent and the first regular season CCCAT poll came out and Eastwood was voted No. 5, the only big discrepancy between our two rankings.
Naturally, this was intriguing to me so I did a deeper dive to see what I missed. That's why we're going to give El Paso Eastwood their rightful shine and explore what makes them an exciting team heading into the meat of the season.
In Texas, you can have all of the depth in the world but at the end of the day, if you don't have a predominant low stick, that doesn't matter.
El Paso Eastwood is a perfect representation of this idea as they have one of the state's best all-around distance talents leading their team in the form of senior Aidan Torres. We've already covered Torres extensively as he came in at No. 4 in our preseason individual rankings, but it's important to understand the role he plays for this Eastwood team.
Torres has made himself one of the state's most reliable No. 1 runners as he continually produces elite results on the track and the grass. He had the best season of his career in 2023 which saw him knock nearly two minutes off his 5000m personal best from 16:49.60 all the way down to 14:57.30 which earned him a spot at NXN.
Additionally, Torres also had an incredible track season which saw him run 4:11.55 over 1600m and 8:57.50 over 3200m which earned him fifth place at the UIL State Championship.
To put it simply, Torres is one of the best and he's already continued to prove it to start the 2024 season. In two races over 5000m, Torres has already set a huge personal best and ran under the 15:00 mark in both of them. He ran 14:40.61 to open up the season at the Canutillo XC Invitational and then followed this up with a 14:59.71 at the Jim Omohondro Twilight Invite. He looks to be in great shape to start the year and we'll keep an eye on him as the championship season comes around in October.
Jonah Herd competes at the 2023 UIL state cross country meet
Outside of Torres, El Paso Eastwood has shown to have a great cast of depth to start the year. Sophomore Noah Loweree currently leads this group with an outstanding start to his second year.
Loweree opened up his season with his first sub-16 performance at the Canutillo Invitational where he ran 15:18.18 to finish third overall. He recently backed this up with another solid performance at the aforementioned Twilight Invitational where he placed eighth in 16:03.40.
Loweree will be taking on a big role for Eastwood this fall, however, his hot start to the season shows that he's in good shape and looks perfectly capable of being the strong No. 2 runner this team needs.
Moving on from Loweree, Eastwood have several guys who've run very close together to start the year, the first of these being senior Marcos Madrid. Madrid has really stepped up to start the season as his performances are a marked improvement from previous seasons.
He set a huge personal best to open up the year in 15:30.57 and then followed this up with a solid 16:02.50 to finish seventh at the team's home meet. Consistency will be key for Madrid as the No. 3 spot looks to be where the money will be made in the team race this year. However, he's had a great start to the season and looks primed to continue this solid form.
Coming in right behind Madrid has been fellow senior Luke Cruz who returns this year after being a critical part of Eastwood's success last year.
Cruz opened up the season in 15:31.03 and then followed it up by running 16:10.27 the following week, both performances being improvements from last year. He'll bring valuable experience to a team with a healthy mix of youth and look for him to score critical points again this year.
Rounding out Eastwood's top-five is junior Job DeSantos. DeSantos is another guy similar to Madrid who's taken a big step to contribute to this Eastwood team. He started the season off with a huge personal best of 15:44.81 and then had another solid performance the following week where he ran 16:07.76 to finish ninth overall.
Both of these are great performances, especially for a No. 5 runner and DeSantos will put this team in a great spot if he can keep producing like this.
El Paso Eastwood have definitely impressed to start the year with back-to-back performances that show a team who run close together and fast. It'll be interesting to see how they fare when matched up head to head against some of the state's best but things look good to start the year.
This team definitely looks fast on paper, but their ability to maintain consistency as the season goes on will be the determining factor in how far this team can go.
I'm excited to see them hopefully be consistent and add yet another team into the mix for the podium in Round Rock.