So Class 6A has a defending champion. What it doesn't have is a favorite.

Auburn put five runners in the top 30 last fall. Four have graduated. Sarah Tole is back for her senior year and Tole alone is worth a great deal, but the group behind her: Abigail Hardee, Merrill Kaplowitz, Adeline Clark, Bella Crow, Siobhan Keane -- was running behind that departed senior class a year ago.

Hoover, meanwhile, returns everyone.

The graduation math

Vestavia had four runners inside the top 25. All gone. Auburn had four inside the top 30. All gone. Hoover's five went 1-9-10-48-63 and every one of them is back.

Two of the three teams that finished highest in the old 7A are starting over. The two best positioned to take advantage were already good and already young.

Hewitt-Trussville sets the standard

Line up every returning athlete in the classification and the Huskies come out on top. They lost only Natalie Wiram.

Hadley Turner and Bella Aycock are sophomores. Mary Durham and Leah Anderson are seniors, Evelyn Robertson a junior, Lily Armstrong a sophomore. Turner and Durham are a genuine front pair and Anderson is the kind of third runner that turns a good team into a hard one.

The middle is the work -- there's a stretch from Anderson back to Robertson and Aycock that Hewitt would like to compress. Nobody in the class is better set up to win in 2026. Nobody's better set up for 2027 either.

Hoover has the champion, and she's a freshman

Reese Gonzalez ran under 18 minutes at Oakville as an eighth grader and beat a three-time defending state champion doing it. She's a freshman this fall.

Everything behind her is back too. Amelia Vann and Sara Chairez finished ninth and tenth and are juniors. Ruthie Wilbanks and Ellie Ness, who stretched the Bucs out to 48th and 63rd, are juniors. Leah Imbragulio is a senior.

Hoover's problem last fall was the gap between three and four. Both of those runners return with another year on them. Close it halfway and the Bucs are the team to beat -- and the arrow points up for three more years.

Huntsville is deep and getting younger

Reese Dupuis finished sixth and is a junior. Haleigh Rowe was 21st and is a junior. Eva Jeffery is a senior. Arleigh Vayda and Olivia Hard filled out the five as eighth graders and are freshmen now.

Losing Amelia Wilbourn and Leah Sitterson is real -- two of five, both ahead of Jeffery. But Caroline Newby and Nora Braden ran within five seconds of each other just behind the scoring group, and a team developing two freshmen with that kind of insurance tends to be better in November than August.

Hewitt and Huntsville are close enough that one race could separate them either way.

Oak Mountain might be the best story in the class

Chloe Jeffcoat, Anikka Venter and Maggie McPhail scored 22nd, 30th and 41st last fall as eighth graders. All three are freshmen now. Fiona Mallory is a senior, Anna Bond and Anabelle Williams juniors, and only Catarina Williams is gone.

Freshman years are where the biggest jumps happen. Two of those three taking an ordinary step puts Oak Mountain in the top three. All three, and it's a different conversation.

Auburn and Vestavia are rebuilding in public

Auburn has Tole, the best distance runner in Class 6A, a senior chasing the individual title that got away from her at Oakville. Hardee and Clark are seniors, Kaplowitz a junior, Crow and Keane sophomores. Kaplowitz taking a real step toward Tole is the difference between defending and reloading.

Vestavia Hills graduated Anna James Litty, Abby Allen, Olivia Carroll and Angela Zhang -- fourth, eighth, 18th and 25th. What's left is Ruth Farmer and Audrey McFarland, juniors, Kate McKinnon, a senior, and sophomores Grace Won and Charlotte Newell.

Here's the thing: their season bests fall within 25 seconds of one another, tighter than any other returning five in the class. Vestavia isn't a returning power. It's a new varsity that already runs together, which is a better place to start than most rebuilds get.

Four more what-ifs

Enterprise's nineteen seconds. The season bests of Emily De Hoyos, Abigail Padgett, Caroline Granger and Kamryn Wile fall inside 19.35 seconds -- the tightest returning spread in the class. De Hoyos and Padgett are sophomores, Granger and Wile seniors. No team converts fitness into places more efficiently, and Section 2 gives them a clear road to Oakville.

Opelika's second runner. Caroline Couey is a senior who finished third in this field. Lillian Massey, Holiday Rohrbaugh, Katherine Fernandez and Sophia Tucker are all underclassmen with room to move. In a section where four qualify and four programs posted full teams, one runner in the low 21s changes everything.

Thompson's sophomores becoming juniors. Addison Zoebelein finished 11th; London Yarbrough and Luna Montiel-Duenas were sophomores too, Aliya Lane an eighth grader. One senior lost. Another team whose result understates where it's headed -- the problem is where it has to qualify.

Bob Jones and Fairhope climbing. Sarah Allison finished 17th as a sophomore, with Elise Marks, Bailey Lehmann, Aaliyah Wright and Sophia Hughes behind her -- one of the youngest lineups in 6A. Fairhope has Mariah Ruff, a junior, plus Lane Holcomb and Josie Kemper. Both are two developing runners from a different tier.

Section 3 is the hardest race of the year, and it isn't the state meet

Section 3 runs at Sokol Park on Oct. 29: Hewitt-Trussville, Hoover, Oak Mountain, Vestavia Hills, Thompson, Spain Park, Prattville, Tuscaloosa County.

Five teams I'd put in my top seven statewide. Four advance.

Somebody very good ends her season on the last Thursday in October. Oak Mountain, Vestavia and Thompson are the three most likely to be fighting for the last two spots. Spain Park has the roughest draw in the state -- Leighton Zelwak, Maddie Cook, Makayla Rich, Lauren LeCroy and Mia Nicolic would contend for a qualifying spot in most sections and are looking up at five programs here.

Section 4 at Scottsboro is a smaller version. Huntsville is safe, Bob Jones and Buckhorn should be, and Grissom and Hazel Green line up essentially even for the last spot with Sparkman and James Clemens close enough to argue. Kassidy Young gives Grissom a top-20 individual; Sakura Hollingsed leads a tighter Hazel Green pack; Autumn Shephard and Alana Dobre are a young Sparkman front pair.

Sections 1 and 2 are more forgiving, and that deserves saying plainly. With four qualifying spots and eight-team fields, Fairhope, Baker, Davidson, Mary G. Montgomery, Alma Bryant, Smiths Station, Opelika and Central-Phenix City all have a real path to Oakville. Kaylee Stallings, Morgan Parks, Baylee Alexander, Madison King and Olivia Ortiz all give their teams something to build on.

The individual race

Sarah Tole against Reese Gonzalez, round two -- a senior with three titles against the freshman who took the fourth one from her.

Caroline Couey, Hadley Turner and Reese Dupuis are all within striking distance, and the medal conversation runs deep: Mary Durham, Amelia Vann, Sara Chairez, Addison Zoebelein, Leah Anderson, Haleigh Rowe, Sarah Allison, Kassidy Young, Eva Jeffery, Fiona Mallory, Chloe Jeffcoat, Mariah Ruff.

Fifteen medals. More than fifteen runners with an argument.

How I'd rank them today

1. Hewitt-Trussville
2. Hoover
3. Huntsville
4. Oak Mountain
5. Auburn
6. Vestavia Hills
7. Thompson
8. Enterprise
9. Bob Jones
10. Fairhope

Hoover ahead of Huntsville and Auburn down to fifth, both on the graduation math. The defending champion returns one scorer. Hoover returns five.

Three of my top seven qualify out of the same section, so this list and the state meet results are going to disagree no matter what.

Ask me again in October.