My name is Roland Hopkins and I started running cross country in eighth grade at Jefferson Junior High in Woodridge, IL. I ran four years of cross country and two years of track (thanks Raf) at Downers Grove South (class of ’02). I continued to run four years of cross country and track at North Central College. I was a volunteer coach at Waubonsie Valley for a year and a half (2009 – 2010). 

When I am not doing my day job as an accountant, you can usually find me involved in one of my two daughters’ activities. During cross country season we are usually at meets tagging along with the Minooka Cross Country teams where my wife Jes is an assistant coach. A special thank you to her for putting up with me and all the time I spend during the season on the site.

I am a huge stat nerd so originally I started doing speed ratings on my own for a handful of meets to figure out where teams stacked up nationally. Thanks to some peer pressure from Kevin Gummerson and few Minooka parents, I decided to dive into doing speed ratings for Illinois to help generate more interest in the sport and make performances comparable across the entire state.

A special thank you to Mr. Bill Meylan of Tullyrunners.com (creator of speed ratings for cross country) for graciously responding to all of my email questions and helping me understand his process better and Mike Newman with Athletic.net for having a comprehensive database with results to make this process easier.

I hope that you enjoy what the site offers.  Feel free to ask any questions you might have.