Finally. Some cross country team rankings we can believe in.

Now that the Ventura County Championships have been held, there's an on-the-course, head-to-head way to determine the area's top teams.

Cross country — along with track and field in the spring — may be the two most difficult high school sports in which to rank teams. There are so many apples and oranges, you could start an roadside stand.

It's not like most of the other team sports, in which teams actually (gasp!) play each other on identical fields. The early season in cross country is made up of strings of invitational meets in which some teams compete and others don't.

Later on, leagues may have dual or double-dual meets, which helps settle things within leagues, but doesn't do much if you're trying to rank a bigger area, such as Ventura County.

That, of course, is what we try to do here each week. There were a lot of emails from coaches after The Star's rankings last week, which came after the Mount SAC Invitational.

Unfailingly, they all started off with praise and thanks: "First of all, thanks for always making cross country an important sport of the county," said one. "Thanks for the many fine articles on cross country this season. As a former coach, I appreciate the coverage provided by The Star," said another.

Then all of them went into long explanations about how they would go about ranking county teams. The primary thing most of them go by is team times, i.e., combining the times of the top five runners on a team and comparing it to that of other teams.

One former coach (and it's amazing how many people who no longer coach still keep track of all this) wrote that he uses the team times from the Clovis Invitational, the Mount SAC Invitational and the Ventura County Championships to base any rankings he does, because most teams compete in all three.

But still, some do not. Or they rest runners. Or some underclassmen will be sent to lower-division races. The apples are still not completely being compared to apples.

Most of the coaches said it's ludicrous to give small schools like Thacher, La Reina or Fillmore passage into our top five because while they may be highly ranked in their CIF-Southern Section division, there's a huge gap in team times between Divisions 1 through 3 and Divisions 4 and 5.

This week, The Star's rankings are based on the results of the county meet.

Admittedly, a lot of our cross country rankings have been generated more by CIF-SS rankings rather the arduous task of poring through team times. Since The Star ranks only an overall top five boys teams and an overall top five girls teams, going by team times would serve the bigger schools much more than the smaller schools. The Thachers, La Reinas and Fillmores of the world wouldn't get as much attention, and while the Marmonte League schools may have better team times than the smaller schools, perhaps it's not such a bad thing to give the smaller schools a shout-out from time to time.

Rankings are subjective anyway. Sometimes wildly so. What they do above everything else is get people talking — and perhaps arguing — about the sport.

LEAGUE MEET TIME

Now that the county meet is history, Thursday is the next big step for the area's cross country teams. League meets will determine champions and help decide who goes on to CIF-SS competition.

Tri-Valley League coaches have voted to start holding the finals at Lake Casitas.

"The course at Casitas, time-wise and course-wise, best emulates Mount SAC (the site of the CIF-SS prelims and finals)," La Reina coach Robert Lopez said.

The meet starts at 3:30 p.m.

The Marmonte League finals will be at Agoura High at 3 p.m., the Channel League finals will be at Camino Real Park at 2:30 p.m. and the Pacific View League finals will be at Oxnard College at 2:30 p.m.

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The Star's rankings