Rankings Update: Top Ten Texas Girls Teams

The 2026 season is in full swing, with most top teams having multiple races under their belts. Not only does this give us a good idea of the competitive landscape as we advance, but it also allows us to check in on the status of our preseason predictions. While not all of our top teams from last week's update competed this weekend, we can still garner valuable insights from those who did. So, let's see who gained ground and who dropped down in this week's team rankings update.

Flower Mound did not compete this week, and the result from the Southlake 5K XC Invite - 45 points, team win, without Adeline Bennett - remains the strongest opening result in the classification. Liana Cluley-Garza (Sr.) led in 17:29.90, Eliana Rivera (Sr.) followed in 17:52.40, and Megan Schmidt (Sr.), Jewel Barnes (Jr.), and Allie Driscoll (Jr.) completed a scoring group that won a loaded elite field without a single senior appearing from the program's preseason frontrunner.

Nothing from this week's racing changed the position at the top. Two teams that raced at Seven Lakes and McKinney Boyd produced the most useful new evidence in the field, but none of it is directly comparable to what Flower Mound showed at Southlake. They hold at No. 1 with the most complete early-season team performance in the state.

Carroll did not race this week. Their rise from No. 3 to No. 2 reflects The Woodlands' slip to No. 4 after losing to Katy Tompkins at Seven Lakes - a reshuffling in the two-through-four tier that Carroll benefits from without stepping on the course. The Week 1 argument for Carroll remains unchanged: Grace McIlvain (Sr.) led in 18:30.50 at the Southlake invite against a field that included Flower Mound, The Woodlands, Lovejoy, and Nelson - and the team posted a 44-second 1-5 spread without Megan Bergman and Abigail Perez, their preseason first and second scorers, in the lineup.

That ceiling remains the most contingent and the most compelling in this top ten. Kameron Dukes (Jr.), Nora Farden (So.), Landry Lambert (Sr.), and Quinn Salstrand (Sr.) held a 12-second window across positions two through five without their top two runners. What Carroll looks like with Bergman and Perez healthy and in the lineup is the question that keeps them this high heading into mid-September.

Lovejoy won the UIL Region II-III Preview XC Meet with 19 points at Kate Barr Ross Memorial Park in Huntsville - and the headline numbers demand both recognition and context. Emily Armstrong (So.) won individually in 18:57.90. Lovejoy placed seven runners in the top eight scoring positions. The team scored 19 points and won by a margin that made the outcome a formality by the third scorer.

The context: the field was composed primarily of 5A programs from Central and North Texas - Wylie, Midlothian, Liberty Hill, Lake Belton, and Legacy Ranch - none of whom appeared in this top ten in Week 1. The same Lovejoy lineup that scored 112 points in a field including Flower Mound, Carroll, and The Woodlands at Southlake ran against a substantially lighter field this week. That is not a disqualification of the result - Lovejoy still ran, Armstrong won, and the team's depth installed itself across positions one through seven with authority. Leila Thomas (Jr., 19:43), Kate Roberts (Jr., 19:57), Bronwyn Vaughan (Fr., 19:57), and Lily Fogle (Sr., 19:58) ran the 2nd through 5th scoring positions within one second of each other. The 1-5 spread finished at 1:00.

The week's result also came without Talia Orshalick, Lovejoy's second scorer from Week 1, in the lineup. The depth held without her. What it tells us about how Lovejoy competes against top-ten 6A competition is a question that will be answered when they face those programs again - but the No. 3 ranking reflects both their Southlake evidence and the depth argument this week reinforced.

The Woodlands finished second at the Seven Lakes Showcase XC Invitational with 47 points, two behind Katy Tompkins - and the manner of that loss tells a more complicated story than the two-point margin suggests. Naomi Weller (Sr.) ran 18:08.30 for second overall, a time slightly off her Week 1 showing but still the second-fastest individual performance in the field by more than 20 seconds. The four runners behind her - Emma Harder (Fr., 19:08), Emily Kacher (Jr., 19:15), Makayla Day (So., 19:19), and Leah Griffin (Sr., 19:22) - ran a 13-second spread through positions 2 through 5. That depth is real and improving: their 2-through-5 window tightened from the nine-second cluster they showed at Southlake in Week 1.

The loss to Tompkins came down to the front. Bailey Pipes ran 17:13.10 to win and scored a single point while Weller scored two. In a race where the two teams were separated by so little, Tompkins' individual winner at the front was the difference. The Woodlands' 1-5 spread of 1:13 compares favorably to nearly every other team in this top ten. The drop from No. 2 to No. 4 reflects the Seven Lakes result and the proximity of the teams above them - not a reassessment of the program's ceiling.

Nelson did not compete this week. Their position at No. 5 holds on the evidence from the Southlake 5K XC Invite, where Elena Sather (Sr.) and Lyla Calaway (So.) ran 18:03.90 and 18:15.80 to place ninth and tenth overall in a field that included four of the top ten programs in the state. The 12-second gap between their first two scorers is the best 1-2 combination in this top ten below Flower Mound, and the defending state champions have not yet shown whether the depth behind Sather and Calaway has narrowed the 1:35 spread they ran in Week 1.

The comparison from this week's racing: The Woodlands ran a 1:13 spread at Seven Lakes with four young runners behind Weller; Katy Tompkins won Seven Lakes with a 2:41 spread anchored by an exceptional individual frontrunner. Neither result helps or hurts Nelson's ranking directly. The gap from positions three through five remains the central question of Nelson's season, and another week passed without a data point to answer it.

Bailey Pipes (Fr.) ran 17:13.10 to win the Seven Lakes Showcase - a freshman-opening-weekend performance that ranks among the fastest individual times in the state this fall and is nearly a full minute faster than the second-place finisher in the field. Pipes won by more than 55 seconds. In a class context, 17:13 is a time that would have scored individually at last year's UIL 6A State Championship. It is an exceptional number from a first-year runner in the second week of September.

The team result surrounding that performance gives Tompkins a No. 6 entry into the rankings. Emma Arthur (Jr., 18:44) ran fourth overall to give the program a credible second scorer. Kendall Maloy (So., 18:56) contributed at sixth. Sara Hurtado (Sr., 19:45) and Caroline MacLellan (Sr., 19:54) completed the scoring group at positions four and five. The 1-5 spread of 2:41 is the widest in this top ten, and it is entirely a function of how far Pipes ran ahead of the field - the structure of this team is built around an individual whose ceiling sits above the program's current depth, and the gap from Pipes to the back of the scoring lineup is where the team score will be made or lost in November.

Katy Tompkins beat The Woodlands by two points at Seven Lakes and enters the rankings for the first time. How they hold up against a 6A Region III field deeper than the Seven Lakes entry list is the question that determines whether they are a state qualifier or a contender.

Keller won the McKinney Boyd Bronco Stampede elite race with 53 points, edging Dallas Highland Park by four. The margin was narrow, the field was strong, and the result earns Keller a first-time appearance in the state's top ten.

Sarah Darnell (Jr.) ran 18:16.00 for second overall in the elite field - the fastest time posted by any scorer from a top-ten team in this week's competition outside of Pipes' outlier performance. Emma Gibson (Fr., 18:57) and Julia Graves (Jr., 18:59) gave Keller a tight 3-4 combination at 9th and 10th overall. Quinn Boneau (Sr., 19:40) and Katherine Wander (So., 19:50) completed the scoring group as the 4th and 5th scorers. The 1-5 spread finished at 1:34.

Keller's scoring structure at McKinney Boyd - a fast individual, a tight freshmen-junior pair behind her, and two seniors in the back - produced the tighter team score in a head-to-head against a Highland Park program with the meet's individual winner. Yumi DeSaram (Sr., 19:56) served as the 6th scorer, giving the program a meaningful displacement runner if the back of the lineup tightens. At No. 7, Keller enters a conversation they have not previously been part of in this ranking cycle, and the McKinney Boyd result is the evidence that put them there.

Ryan Sontag (Sr.) won the McKinney Boyd elite race in 17:56.00 - essentially the same time she posted at the Coach T Marcus Invitational in Week 1 - and Highland Park still lost the team competition by four points. That gap tells the team's story this week. Paisley Bassett (Jr., 18:50) and Finley Heckler (Jr., 18:52) gave Highland Park a credible 2-3 pair, scoring 7th and 8th in the field. The break came at positions four and five: Anne Cooper (Sr.) ran 19:54 for the 18th scoring position, and Orsella Hooks (Fr.) ran 20:13 for the 23rd. The gap from Heckler (scored 8) to Cooper (scored 18) - ten positions and over a minute of clock - is where Highland Park's team score opened up against Keller's tighter 3-4-5 cluster.

The drop from No. 6 to No. 8 reflects the McKinney Boyd result directly. Highland Park's ceiling when Sontag is running 17:56 at the front is not in question. The positions behind Bassett and Heckler are what determine whether that ceiling translates to a team score that holds up against the deeper lineups in Region I. Cooper (Sr.) and Hooks (Fr.) are the development story for the back half of Highland Park's lineup - and the McKinney Boyd result framed exactly what development means for this program's November trajectory.

Vandegrift did not race this week. Their position at No. 9 rests on a Week 1 showing at the Coach T Marcus Invitational where the program scored 170 points in a field that also included Highland Park and Salado - and where Krupa (Sr.) ran 17:41 to win the race outright, the fastest individual performance posted by any top-ten team member across the opening weekend's two major DFW-area meets. The individual ceiling is as high as this team has shown in recent cross country memory. The team score of 170 reflects the gap that exists between that front runner and the four scorers behind her.

In a week where Keller and Highland Park gave the field clearer benchmarks in the McKinney Boyd elite race, Vandegrift's position holds on their Week 1 result - but the rankings above them are growing better-defined. When Vandegrift races against comparable 6A competition, those results will clarify whether the No. 9 placement reflects the program's ceiling or underestimates it.

Eastwood did not race this week. Their Week 1 win at the Jim Omohundro Invitational - 32 points, with Natalie Vega (Sr.) and Ana Caraveo (Sr.) going 1-2 in 17:56 and 18:01 - remains the strongest opening result from any team west of the I-35 corridor. The spread improvement from 2:06 to 1:25 between last year's state level and this week's race is the most dramatic single-meet development story of the opening weekend.

The comparison from this week's racing that matters most: Keller won McKinney Boyd at 53 points in a deep DFW elite field; Eastwood won the Omohundro at 32 points in a West Texas-anchored field. Different regions, different competition contexts, similar tier of effort from the programs involved. Eastwood holds at No. 10 while two new programs entered above them - but their West Texas schedule means the evidence base here will remain limited until they face broader 6A competition later in the fall.