First Thoughts: 2023 Lewis XC Crossover

What a day! The Lewis XC Crossover was as good as advertised with a handful of top-tier names flexing their aerobic prowess while a number upsets (and flat-out dominance) were scattered throughout the final results. Below, we analyzed the top finishing teams in the men's and women's fields from one of the absolute best D2 meets of the year.

Seeing the Colorado Mines women win this race was far from surprising. In fact, seeing them post 49 points and easily take down a limited Grand Valley State squad wasn't surprising, either. Truthfully, there's not a whole lot of new analysis that I can pull from the Orediggers' dominant effort.

That said, this team may actually be even better than we thought they were.

The RMAC powerhouse had Holly Moser (7th), Margaux Basart (9th), Clare Peters (10th), Jenna Ramsey-Rutledge (11th) and Grace Strongman (12th) pack together for a collective performance that held tons of firepower and few flaws.

The emergence of Margaux Basart as a top scorer in this lineup is huge. If that kind of performance is what we can expect from her throughout the rest of the season, then I don't know how the Colorado Mines women will have a poor race this season.

And sure, she showed promise in the spring by running 16:55 for 5000 meters, but a top-10 result in this field to take down her All-American teammates was a really nice development.

But maybe the more important development is that Riley McGrath (26th) and Molly Maksin (35th) had clear "off" days despite being viewed as two of the most talented women in the country coming into this fall. If they rebound for their next race, then that should make this upper-tier program even more dominant.

Oh, and nice race by Alexis Herr in 19th place. The fact that we're only highlighting her now should further exemplify how many impressive scoring options that the Orediggers have for this fall.

I'm not going to look too closely into this result for Grand Valley State, mainly because they only fielded half of their projected top-seven (and it may not have even been half).

Klaudia O'Malley (3rd) was unsurprisingly excellent while Kayce Rypma (16th) had a respectable outing. Madelyn Frens (20th) had one of her better races while Taryn Chapko (21st) may have wanted a slightly better result.

But for the most part, we can only shrug our shoulders and move on. The Lakers were likely testing out who would make up the latter-half of their lineup this fall and there were very few surprises, although I am confident that Chapko is someone who is built for the postseason.
 

Relative to expectations, this might have been the best team performance of the day.

The Lewis women were certainly on our radar going into Saturday. In fact, our D2 specialist Grace McLaughlin even predicted that the Flyers would finish 5th overall -- and that was probably a toss-up spot between them, Biola and Western Washington.

But instead of allowing Grace to have a perfectly predicted top-five, the Lewis women significantly outperformed expectations. They did so with a lineup structure was beautifully balanced with firepower, a strong supporting cast and a good enough fifth scorer.

The biggest hero of the day for Lewis was Hannah Smrcka who secured an outstanding 8th place finish. And don't get me wrong, we knew that she would be good, but frankly, we weren't sure if the Flyers were going to have a true low-stick at all this fall.

Update: They do.

Caroline Pacer-Ryan (22nd) had a nice day and was somewhat on par with expectations, although the excellent middle-lineup value of Abbey Kozak (23rd) and Anna Kozak (30th) is what made this team so challenging to take down. With Madilyn Calloway (49th) quickly closing out the Flyers' top-five, it was hard to find a weak point on this team.

Defeating a team like Winona State that is so much better in terms of firepower and experience is really impressive. The Warriors have looked great this season and to defeat them should be a massive confidence boost for Lewis moving forward.

For the most part, there isn't really a whole lot to say about Winona State. We knew coming into this season that they had a VERY top-heavy lineup that could produce some monster scores, but also be susceptible to some backend volatility.

Lindsay Cunningham took home the overall win with such incredible ease. Our on-site photographer, David Nguyen, even told us that she had run the course record by over 40 seconds (which is still unconfirmed).

Having teammate Kaylee Beyer (2nd) finish right behind Cunningham was huge, and it was a pretty convincing silver medal performance as well. Teammate Sophia Taarud (25th) put together a fairly respectable effort of her own, although the scoring began to drop-off after her with the Warriors' final two scorers placing 52nd and 61st overall.

It should be noted that McKenna Taylor was the team's sixth runner in 97th place. However, she was someone who finished 3rd at the 2022 version of this meet!

Through two races, Taylor hasn't been as sharp as she was last year and it may be fair to assume that she has hit a simple setback. The good news is that she is incredibly talented and it's still pretty early-on in the season.

If she can rally back to at least 60% or 70% of her top form by the national meet, then that should allow Winona State to cut down on a handful of points. That's a realistic scenario that should leave everyone involved fairly optimistic for the next month of racing.

When it comes to the Cougars' scoring structure on Saturday, I can't say that I'm too surprised. However, the order in which their scorers crossed the line wasn't exactly what I was expecting.

Shannon King (14th) had an awesome race, producing a borderline low-stick result that this team very much needed, especially with veteran ace Paige Tack having an "off" day in 32nd place. The other women in this lineup -- Molly Miller (31st), Lucy Pidek (56th) and Michelle Burroughs (67th) -- all had decent races, although Miller in particular stepped up for a strong performance.

The gap between Colorado Christian and the next two teams ahead of them, Lewis and Winona State, was a bit larger than I was expecting to see. The good news is that Tack is most certainly better than she showed and she should be able to give CCU a nice 1-2 punch in the postseason if King continues to run like she jut did.

They may have finished 6th overall, just narrowly two points ahead of 7th place, but I was encouraged by what I saw from Western Washington.

The Vikings were led by Ashley Reeck who posted a strong, but very unsurprising, 18th place finish to act as the lead scorer for her team. However, what really caught my attention was seeing Ila Davis, Marian Ledesma, Sophie Wright and Meaera Nystrom go 43-46-47-48, respectively, in the overall results.

Yes, this team needs more firepower and someone to bridge the gap between Reeck and the rest of their scorers. Even so, the backend portion of this lineup ran as a pack and minimized any excessive scoring past 50th place.

If that group can collectively move up 10 places (each) in this kind of field, then you're looking at a much better team result than what we saw on Saturday. Heck, if just one or two women of those women improve from here, then that would still be an impactful development.

That, of course, is easier said than done, but there's at least an avenue for the Western Washington women to make further progress in the postseason.

A lot of people in Division Two, both at The Stride Report and among coaching circles, were very high on the Biola women going into this season -- and understandably so.

The Eagles had a VERY young team last year, but they still qualified for the national meet and have made solid improvements since then. With great depth and tons of upside, the Biola women felt like they were due for a breakout 2023 cross country season.

Unfortunately for them, that breakout didn't begin at the Lewis XC Crossover as they faded to 7th place overall. But in actuality, the Eagles had a fairly respectable day.

Bethany Mapes (15th) was great, giving her team a true lead scorer to rally around. She had shown signs of being the top ace for the Eagles this fall and she very much delivered on those expectations. Behind her were Susanne Bruennig, Britta Holmberg, Lynette Ruiz and Karis Brown who finished 33-44-50-63, respectively.

By comparison, Biola really wasn't any different from Colorado Christian or Western Washington. And truthfully, if just a few points had fallen in the Eagles' favor, then they would have placed 5th overall and our tone about their performance would be much more positive.

I still believe in the upside of this team and I do think they are better than what they showed us on Saturday. Of course, let's not confuse untapped potential with a poor performance. This west coast program still ran fairly well in Illinois.

Look, I could effusively praise Colorado Mines and talk for paragraphs upon paragraphs about how amazing they are...but all of you already know how good they are.

Duncan Fuehne (2nd) was incredible and was the only one who gave Storer a legitimate challenge in the last 1000 meters of the race. Meanwhile, Andrew Kaye (6th), Logan Bocovich (8th), John O'Malley (9th) and JP Rutledge (11th) closed out the scoring while Alberto Campa (13th) and Daniel Appleford (18th) were excellent as well.

Kaye and O'Malley are the real heroes for Colorado Mines as they produced huge results that were clearly better than a lot of prior performances that they had previously produced. Not only that, but the Orediggers dominated this race without Loic Scomparin and Paul Knight! To think that this RMAC juggernaut could have been significantly stronger on Saturday is pretty hard to fathom.

And if those men do return to this lineup later this fall, then the Orediggers could potentially be just as good as they were last year...

Matthew Storer was just flat-out incredible in this race. I think a lot of people were a little surprised when we ranked this Colorado Christian star at TSR #6 in our preseason rankings, but securing a win over this kind of field (and specifically Duncan Fuehne) only validates why TSR was so high on him back in August.

Not only that, but Trent Cochran (4th) looked the best that he ever has and Alexander Vance (9th) put together what might have been the best race of his career. Simply put, the firepower of Colorado Christian seemed to be just as potent as it was last year.

In fact, they were actually tied with Colorado Mines in this race through three runners!

The Cougars did a see a drop-off after their lethal scoring trio, but their reinforcements were certainly good enough to avoid any excessive point gathering on the backend. With Zachariah Vance placing 26th and Caleb Hershey snagging 39th place, the Colorado Christian men had a lineup that wasn't going to be defeated by anyone other than the Orediggers.

Admittedly, there was a significant gap between CCU's fifth and sixth runners, the latter of whom finished 62nd overall. But even if the Cougars had to rely on their sixth runner to score, they still would have comfortably settled for 2nd place.

At the end of the day, the Colorado Christian should be very happy with their effort. They flexed outstanding scoring potency and kept their top-five in check. As long as all five of those men continue to run as well as they did on Saturday, then Colorado Christian could absolutely return to the podium in November.

And who said home course advantages don't exist?

....ok, no one said that, but just go with it.

Home course advantage or not, the Lewis men were excellent on Saturday. Sure, their lineup may not have been as flashy as Colorado Mines or Colorado Christian, but it didn't need to be. For the most part, the Flyers were a well-balanced group with no glaring flaws.

Charlie Wirth (17th) was the valuable lead scorer that we knew he was going to be. However, it was the middle portion of Lewis' top-five -- Evan Horgan (23rd), Sean Ryan (30th) and Daniel Arimi (37th) -- where we saw the greatest value. That trio stabilized this lineup and outperformed most of the third and fourth members on other teams.

Casey Quintana (52nd) was a bit further back from that group, but that was by no means a poor race. In fact, Quintana was the third-best fifth man in the entire field and better yet, Lewis had the second-best sixth man and second-best seventh man of the entire meet, falling behind only Colorado Mines.

In other words, the Flyers flexed outstanding depth and had one of the highest floors of any D2 team in this race. Coach James Kearney should be incredibly proud of the team-centric effort that his men produced on Saturday.

When it comes to the overall performance of Western Washington, I can't say that I'm too surprised, although their lineup structure didn't play out like I was expecting it to.

Coming into this season, we noted that the Vikings boasted great depth, but that they would need more potent low-sticks. However, with the addition of one lineup aspect seemingly comes the loss of another.

Seeing both Kevin McDermott (12th) and Andrew Oslin (14th) in the top-15 of this race was huge. That was exactly what we wanted to see from that duo in a high-stakes field like this. On the national stage, that kind of lead scoring should do wonders for Western Washington.

However, the GNAC program then saw their latter-three scorers fade to 50th, 60th and 63rd. Their sixth man was 89th and their seventh runner was 202nd.

Are those final three scoring results terrible? No, not really, but I did think that we would see those men inch closer to the 35th to 45th place spots rather than the 50th to 60th positions. In that scenario, Western Washington is much more competitive with Lewis.

Either way, I still think that this is a fairly successful day for the Vikings. They developed stronger firepower that we've been asking for and they still finished 4th overall despite a few backend runners leaving room for better results -- and I'd say that's a good thing.

If I'm the Walsh men, I'm pretty happy with this result. The Cavaliers lost a slew of top runners from last year, but still posted a top-five finish to defeat some very respectable teams (which are listed below).

Sure, they didn't blow anyone away, but that shouldn't have been the purpose of today.

On paper, Walsh basically had the same lineup structure as the Lewis men except without a clear low-stick and a few backend scorers who were just a little further back by comparison. The combination of Mitchel Dunham, Noah Graham, Drew Monahan, Anthony Toskin and Alex Keller went 28-33-35-51-76, respectively, putting together a complete top-five with a subtly-strong top-three.

For a team that lost so much scoring prowess from last year, this result was definitely better than I think many of us were expecting. The Cavaliers still have a lot of development to do, but they were plenty solid and that's all that really matters.

Yes, we did think that Cole Nash would be in greater contention for the individual win, but a 10th place finish from the Seawolves' star ace was still a great low-stick result. And truthfully, even if he was in the top-five, that wouldn't have changed the final results.

Michael Zapherson, a transfer from UNC-Greensboro, was a really nice complement to Nash in 16th place. Unsurprisingly, the front-end of Alaska Anchorage's lineup carried most of the scoring weight as it historically has for the Seawolves.

George Payne (48th) did a nice job bridging the gap between the two sides of this team's scoring group and Zachary Kohler (68th) was fairly decent as well, all things considered. Having their fifth and sixth runners finish 92nd and 98th was ultimately a drop-off that kept Alaska Anchorage out of the top-five, but I would say that a lot more went right for this team on Saturday than wrong.

I'm not exactly sure how to describe the Cardinals' performance on Saturday.

The 1-2 punch of Thomas Hufton (19th) and Dominic Suliman (21st) were really solid lead scorers for a team that wasn't able to crack the top-six. However, on the other hand, Saginaw Valley State didn't have anyone else crack the top-70 in the overall results...but all seven of their men finished in the top-100.

In an even larger field like the national meet, that gap could become an issue. That said, I do like that everyone in their varsity lineup stayed within the top-100 and that there is some valuable lead scoring from Hufton and Suliman.

This was a sneaky-great race for the Fort Lewis men. Their scorers were fairly spread out, but it's not like there was one area where there was a massive gap.

Elijah Smith (21st) offered nice lead scoring value, Conner Dossman (47th) and Henry Barth (59th) stabilized this lineup and the latter scorers of Bean Minor (71st) and Caden Resendez (84th) kept things somewhat in check (relative to expectations).

For a team that was on basically on no one's radar this fall, the Skyhawks have to feel pretty good about how they ran.

Well...that wasn't great.

Ransom Allen (3rd) was fantastic. I loved the way that he attacked this race and for a moment, I thought he was legitimately going to take the win. With Zac Truman (24th) and Tyler Buchanan (25th) posting solid performances on their own, the Wayne State men looked really strong through three runners -- but that was expected.

The problem, however, is that no other Wayne State runner cracked the top-115 spots.

Jack Wilson, who finished 30th at the Griak Invitational, had a tough outing and Elijah DiCerbo (who was 92nd in Minnesota) didn't race. You could have also argued that Seth Pianga was capable of more.

We knew that depth was going to be somewhat of a challenge for Wayne State this fall and Saturday certainly proved that to be true. The good news is that Wilson and Pianga are both capable of being significantly better. I'm not sure I would have predicted them to be top-60 finishers this weekend, but they could cut-off a significant amount of points in the future when they're both racing at their best.