TSR Collaboration
Jan 13, 202111 min
Updated: Jan 14, 2021
Click here to see our Just Missed and Honorable Mention names
Click here to read Part One
The Stride Report was under the impression that Lauren Bailey (Indianapolis) was going to be finishing her athletic eligibility at Notre Dame starting next fall. However, a recent development suggests that Bailey may compete for the Greyhounds this winter. If she does, then Bailey will be placed in our rankings.
Having been around for three indoor seasons, this isn’t Hailey Streff’s first rodeo. She has slowly risen up the D2 ranks over the past few years, making an impact on both the grass and the oval while gaining valuable experience in the process.
Streff finished as the first Pueblo runner at the 2019 RMAC Cross Country Championships, which says a lot as she would’ve never been in that position during her first two years on the team. With that added strength gained through cross country, she was able to have a very memorable 2020 indoor season.
The Thunderwolf veteran's best meet came at the New Mexico Classic where she ran 2:12 and 10:08 for the 800 meters and 3000 meters, respectively. When you factor in altitude conversions, those times became 2:11.49 and 9:53.42. Then, just one week later, Streff won the mile in a new personal best time of 4:52 at the "Big Meet" hosted by GVSU, beating out some top-tier national qualifiers in Nancy Jeptoo, Natalia Novak and Lauren Bailey.
The best way to describe Streff has to be “buy into the process and good things will happen”. She worked her way up the ranks and is now a consistent national qualifier and legitimate All-American candidate. She's taken down big-time talents before and hasn't given us a reason to doubt her.
Watch out for the CSU-Pueblo runner this winter.
Kelly-Ann Beckford may technically lack experience, but it certainly hasn’t shown in her young career so far. Beckford pulled off a triple-crown at last year’s MIAA Indoor Championships, sweeping the 800 meters, the mile and the DMR.
Beckford was also slotted to run all three events at the NCAA Championships before they were cancelled. Not only that, but she was among the top-five national qualifiers in the 800 meters as a freshman, boasting a personal best time of 2:09.42 which put her ahead of the some of the top talents in the NCAA.
We have yet to see what Beckford can do on the national stage, but she has been a versatile talent who has proven to be someone capable of taking down some of the best names in the country. She has quietly great consistency for someone as young as her.
Kellerman is the most recent transfer for the Flames on the women’s side and what a major recruiting win she was. The South African distance talent joins this team with personal bests of 2:05 (800) and 4:31 (1500). On paper, she immediately jumps to being a title contender in both the 800 and the mile for this indoor season.
Normally, we would fully agree with you that Kellerman should be ranked higher. However, Kellerman’s personal bests all date back to 2016. She has also never run an indoor circuit before (at least not that we could find) and that can oftentimes require a learning curve. Even so, Kellerman still brings elite talent to the table and sometimes that is enough.
Coach Morgan has done a phenomenal job of getting mile/3k/5k runners into great shape and competing well on the national stage. Now, he’ll look to do the same with Kellerman who looks like she'll primarily focus on the 800 meters. Even if she doesn’t return to the 2:05 form that we've seen from her in the past, she likely falls into the 2:07 to 2:10 range and that is good enough to compete for an NCAA title at this level.
Dania Holmberg continued to keep Seattle Pacific in the national picture last year after not just qualifying for not one event, but two events at the ultimately cancelled 2020 NCAA Indoor Championships. She was slated to compete in both the 3k and 5k.
Last winter, the Falcon junior was ranked at NCAA #12 in the 3000 meters and NCAA #9 in the 5000 meters, so there was a good chance that she could’ve been an All-American.
Holmberg has accomplished quite a bit as a younger competitor whose sweet spot is exactly in that 3k/5k range. With times of 9:38 for 3000 meters and 16:49 for 5000 meters, she is trending in the right direction. She earned her first All-American honor at the 2019 NCAA XC Championships (finishing 21st) and clearly carried that momentum into last winter.
With a chance to gain more fitness during this break from competition, she will look to prove that she is quite capable of keeping up with the top ladies of the D2 scene.
Natalia Novak didn’t necessarily sneak into a national qualifying spot until last year, but she certainly cut it close in terms of when she secured her spot. It wasn’t until Boston University’s Last Chance Qualifier that Novak got her national qualifying time, but just because she got the time in the final moments of the season doesn't mean her performance was any less impressive.
Novak dropped an incredible 4:48 mile personal best to shoot up to NCAA #8 on the national leaderboard at that point. Regardless of cancellations, Novak chose just the right time to hit her stride and was peaking better than almost anyone in D2.
We fully anticipate more fast times from Novak, but we just want to see her be a bit more consistent and see if she can replicate that momentum from last year. If she does, then she'll be a problem for her fellow competitors this winter.
Parsons had a junior year breakthrough just like our TSR #6 runner. She is another up-and-coming talent who has begun to establish herself among the NCAA's best D2 distance runners.
She has already been named an All-American at the indoor national meet once, but could she come back this winter and attempt to pull off the mile/3k double that she was originally slated to last year?
Aside from competing at the NCAA Championships and the GVSU Big Meet, when competing indoors, Parsons finds her place at the front of her races and usually isn’t challenged. This hasn’t mattered too much as she soloed a 4:48 mile at the Edinboro Last Chance Meet and ran a time of 2:13 for 800 meters. However, making the transition to more competitive meets has (at times) been a challenge as she hasn't always been able to take down some of the top talents in those races.
Even so, Parsons is very well-rounded and has a resume that matches up with the best of the best. If she can mesh her tactical prowess with her fastest times in larger meets, then she'll be an extremely difficult name to take down.
Yasmine Hernandez returns to the NCAA scene after being among the top-five national qualifiers last year in the 800 meters, securing the NCAA #4 spot with a mark of 2:09. She was one of the small handful of women to notch a sub-2:10 mark last year and was most definitely in the mix for the national title.
Hernandez has great leg speed, boasting personal best marks of 56 seconds (400) and 1:34 (600). She’s also nabbed an All-American DMR finish during indoors before taking 5th at the 2019 outdoor national meet in the 800 meters, so she’s no stranger to the national stage. Between her consistent speed and experience, Hernandez has all the tools to toe the line and throw down with just about anyone.
The CSU-Pueblo runner has plenty of reasons to be eager about competing this year and we have plenty of reasons to keep an eye on what she does this winter.
This is Celine Ritter’s last collegiate indoor season. Although she doesn’t have a ton of experience racing at the NCAA championship level, she is someone you can’t count out as she is just beginning to gain some serious momentum.
When you also consider that she is coming off of another stellar cross country season from this past fall, it's fair to say that she is not someone that we would want to line up next to this winter.
Last indoor season was a bit of a breakthrough for Ritter as she qualified for Nationals in three events (mile, 3k and DMR), although she opted to only enter the mile and DMR. Coming in seeded fourth in the 3k, she was largely expected to earn an All-American finish, if not contend for a top-three result until the meet was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the cancellation, her season was not all for naught as she set new personal bests in the 800 (2:15), mile (4:49) and 3k (9:31).
The Flames senior has put together quite a career and few women in the NCAA have more momentum than her. Hopefully, she can finish off this winter campaign with another trip to the NCAA Championships where she can show the D2 world that Christian Noble isn’t the only distance star of this Lee program.
Comastri was on fire last indoor season as she punched her ticket to her first indoor national meet and had two chances to get her first All-American honors on the track. Unfortunately she didn't get to race and we didn't get to find out if she was one of the eight best women in either event.
Let’s briefly recap her 2020 indoor season. Comastri only lost two meets on the year and they were both in the 5000 meters. The first loss came at the loaded GVSU Holiday Open while the second loss came at the GLVC Championships.
In that first loss, Comastri was 5th overall, running an outstanding time of 16:31, a new personal best and a comfortable NCAA qualifying time. At her conference meet, she lost only to superstar Lauren Bailey who is one of the more dominant D2 distance runners of the past few years.
Now that we got her few defeats out of the way, let’s talk about all the times that she won. Comastri was the GLVC 3000 meter champion as well as the 3000 meter champion at the uber-competitive GVSU “Big Meet”, crossing the line in front of several nationally ranked D2 runners. That latter victory could definitely be considered the best race of her season as it vaulted her into the national title conversation.
With no chance to show off her true talent on the national stage when she was in the best shape of her life, look for Comastri to have a “prove it” season this winter.
Someone who often doesn't get enough respect, largely because she is in the GLVC, is Elysia Burgos who is sometimes overshadowed by fellow stars in her conference. But let's make the case for the Southwest Baptist junior and explain why she is listed at TSR #4 in our rankings.
In the first meet of the 2020 indoor season, Burgos soloed a 4:47 mile, finishing almost 20 seconds ahead of the next competitor. Not impressed? Well, how about seeing her quadruple at the GLVC Championships and earning a top-three finish across four events? She was the runner-up in the 800 meters and the mile while finishing 3rd in the 3000 meters and also anchoring the Bearcat's to a DMR win.
Wicked fast times, strong range and an exceptional ability to effectively double/triple makes Burgos an incredibly valuable name. In fact, she already ran 4:55 for the mile last month which converted to a flat-track mark of 4:51.
After a very short, but very strong 2020 cross country season where she led Southwest Baptist to a GLVC title, Burgos seems ready to rumble this winter.
Cleyet-Merle didn't take long to introduce herself to the Division 2 world as she was previously at California Baptist, a growing Division 1 program that recently transitioned out of D2. Few transfers could have gone as smoothly as the one that we saw for Cleyet-Merle who secured the top 800 time in D2 last winter and was ranked at NCAA #3 in the mile.
The Greyhound senior saved her best running for the last month of the 2020 indoor track season as she had three weekends where she ran some elite-level times.
Let's start with the Meyo Invitational. Cleyet-Merle was in the same mile race as GVSU’s Allie Ludge and although she didn't beat the superstar Lake, she did finish 5th overall with a shiny new personal best of 4:40. The very next weekend, she won the 800 meters in a time of 2:06 at the GVSU “Big Meet'' over top-ranked national qualifiers such as Yasmine Hernandez, Andra Lehotay and Allie Ludge.
Finally, Cleyet-Merle concluded her regular season with two individual victories in both the 800 meters and the mile at the GLVC Championships, in addition to being the anchor leg on her 2nd place 4x400 team.
Cleyet-Merle is absolutely a national title favorite this year, especially in the 800 meters. However, you could make the argument that she's also in the running for NCAA gold in the mile. She has incredible speed and has been able to consistently defeat some of the best runners that D2 has to offer.
For everyone who thought that Ludge was going to ride into the sunset after her fantastic 2020 indoor season, that doesn't appear to be the case. It seems like Ludge knew that she had unfinished business as she still hasn’t captured that elusive first NCAA title.
Being ranked at NCAA #1 in the 3000 meters by eight seconds would have given her the best shot at a national title last year. Even so, Ludge is someone who is clearly one of the top D2 talents of the past decade given all that she has accomplished. Now, she has one final season to put it altogether and come away with NCAA gold.
After coming off of an outstanding 2019 cross country season where she lowered her 6k PR to 20:34, while simultaneously becoming an All-American and leading GVSU to a runner-up team finish, Ludge carried that momentum to the indoor oval. She had two momentous results that led the D2 world to just say, “Wow”.
The first result came on her home track where she won the 3000 meters in an incredible time of 9:18, beating out NAIA national champ Hannah Stoeffel in the process and earning the fastest time that D2 saw all season long. The other jaw-dropping result came at Notre Dame where she finished 3rd in the mile with a time of 4:39, besting top ranked distance talents such as Annie Fuller (now with Texas A&M), Bernice Cleyet-Merle (Indianapolis) and Abby Nichols (now with Colorado).
With a lot to look forward to after making the decision to return, Ludge is likely aiming to leave GVSU on her own terms and leave the Lakers as the national champion that we know she can be.
To be honest we haven't seen a lot from Cotter as of late, but when you have as much talent as she does, it's not really a requirement that she races a ton. As long as she is healthy and entered in a race, then there's a good chance that she'll walk away as the winner.
Cotter only raced two times last winter, but still came away with a victory in each meet. She took home a victory at the Don Kirby Elite meet over D1 competition with an altitude-converted mile time of 4:38. She even parlayed that time into the top seed for the NCAA Championships as that was the fastest time run all year.
While running the anchor leg of the Grizzlies DMR, the Irish distance runner came across the finish line victorious at the RMAC Championships. Their relay time was good enough for the Grizzlies to earn the NCAA #3 mark in D2.
Let's also remind you that Cotter was the 2019 NCAA cross country champion while being a part of the historic Adams State victory in which they only scored 23 team points. With the possible exception of one unexciting race this past fall, we haven't been given much of a reason to put anyone other than Cotter at our TSR #1 spot.