HS: Winter region, state rankings, Jan. 12

by Sheldon Shealer

January 12, 2015

The second ranking in January is always viewed as the "correction" week.

The preseason winter rankings are assembled in October, released in November, but not all teams play their first games until January. Therefore, the past two months, idle teams from Texas have been inching their way higher and higher each week in the SIMA FAB 50 despite no games played and no change in the state or regional rankings.

All of that changes this week.

Just about every top boys and girls team from Texas played their first matches last week, and the fallout is quite dramatic. On the region level, Texas-South girls and Texas-North boys underwent major overhauls. Those changes greatly altered the Texas state rankings for both genders. Needless to say, the state ranking overhauls will trickle up to the SIMA FAB 50, which is released Tuesday. Therefore, expect quite a lot of change in both SIMA FAB 50s this week.

But staying focused on the state and region levels for today, a few major Thursday-Friday-Saturday events in colder-than-average Texas weather proved to be the big storylines.

BOYS

Flower Mound (Flower Mound, Texas) and Sam Houston (Arlington, Texas) made big splashes last week, each going 3-0 in the North Texas Elite Showcase. Sam Houston's marquee result was a win over favored and highly ranked McKinney Boyd (McKinney, Texas), which handed fellow highly ranked Coppell (Coppell, Texas) a rare instate loss. Interestingly, the biggest "winner" thanks to the NTES happened to be defending state champ Fort Bend Clements (Sugar Land, Texas). With Boyd and Coppell out of the way, idle Clements moves to No. 1 in the Texas state rankings.

Elsewhere, American Heritage-Plantation (Plantation, Fla.) upset Gulliver Prep (Miami, Fla.) last week, ending Gulliver's undefeated season and its stay in the SIMA FAB 50 Top 5. The result was key in respect to Gulliver is one of the squads playing in this week's Montverde Academy Soccer Tournament in Montverde, Fla., where the winter national title very well could be settled by week's end. Gulliver's loss allows [Doral fl-m] (Doral, Fla.) to take over the top regional spot among a group of five quality one-loss programs.

GIRLS

The first week of the Texas high school season is all about one event — the National Elite Prep Showcase in Fort Worth. Top programs from California and Florida mix it up with the elite Texas programs, and this year's big winner was Texas in an event that was shortened by one match per team due to the cold weather.

SIMA FAB 50 No. 1 Cathedral Catholic (San Diego, Calif.) enter the event at 11-0 and left at 12-1-1, losing to Plano West (Plano, Texas). The California teams, which historically have fared well, went a combined 6-4-2.

American Heritage-Plantation (Plantation, Fla.) saw its lengthy undefeated run ended the very first day at NEPS in a 1-0 loss to Coppell (Coppell, Texas). The Patriots bounced back with a pair of 1-0 wins over unranked Texas teams.

Coppell, Keller (Keller, Texas), Bishop Lynch (Dallas, Texas), Flower Mound (Flower Mound, Texas) and Sachse (Sachse, Texas) delivered the strongest showings at NEPS, going a combined 13-0-3.

See the entire winter high school region and state rankings:

REGION RANKINGS: BOYS (Jan. 12) | GIRLS (Jan. 12)

STATE RANKINGS: BOYS (Jan. 12) | GIRLS (Jan. 12)

Related Topics: HS State/Region Rankings