Brett Haffner
Sep 28, 20227 min
Written by Brett Haffner, questions by John Cusick, edits by Garrett Zatlin
One very noticeable takeaway from the Knights’ victory was the reintroduction of Rachel Hirschkind to this team’s top-five. She finished 3rd overall behind Kathleen McCarey and Windsor Ardner this past weekend.
Hirschkind was a solid performer last fall, finishing as SUNY Geneseo’s third or fourth scorer in most meets. However, she was ultimately inconsistent with how far behind she was to McCarey and Ardner.
In some meets, she’d be 30 seconds behind those two low-sticks, but in others, she’d be more than 60 seconds behind.
But following her performance at the Harry F. Anderson Invitational, Hirschkind finished just three seconds behind Ardner and "only" 19 seconds behind McCarey.
Even though this race was 5000 meters and not the standard women’s distance of 6000 meters, this result was still incredibly encouraging for the Knights. If Hirschkind turns this team’s potent duo into a lethal scoring trio, then that will be monumental for SUNY Geneseo's national title chances.
Of course, this result shouldn’t be necessarily surprising, either. Hirschkind, who was ranked at TSR #20 this past summer, proved herself as a worthy competitor on the national stage last spring, placing 4th in the steeplechase final at the outdoor national meet back in May.
While steeplechase fitness doesn’t perfectly correlate to cross country prowess, it's still important to note that Hirschkind can perform well, and more importantly peak, on the national stage, as evidenced by her high-end finish in the steeplechase final.
Another important takeaway from the Harry F. Anderson Invitational was the lack of Penelope Greene in the Knights’ varsity lineup. She was SUNY Geneseo's 17th-best runner this past weekend, a result that we’re not used to seeing from someone of her caliber.
After an incredible freshman cross country season where she took 44th at the 2021 cross country national meet and nearly earned herself an All-American honor, Greene has seemingly not been herself on the grass this fall.
It will be absolutely pivotal for her to return to that elite level of fitness throughout the rest of this season, a potential necessity if the Knights are going to contend for a national title.
Facing a handful of solid schools from Division Two, Ethan Gregg raced very intelligently, moving up throughout the race to earn a convincing victory by 10 seconds over the field.
Gregg’s strength comes from the longer distances, as evidenced by his 11th place finish at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships, his 12th place finish in the 5000 meters at the indoor national meet and his two All-American finishes in the 10,000 meters at the outdoor national meet, placing 8th in 2021 and 6th in 2022.
This UW-La Crosse star has been raking up national meet appearances and All-American honors left and right. In most of these cases, his best performances have come from utilizing his strengths by hunting down competitors in the latter-half of races.
However, the biggest test for Gregg this cross country season will be his ability to handle an extremely hot pace against national-level competition. If his aerobic capacity can simply outlast some of the bigger names in Division Three, then Ethan Gregg will be considered as a legitimate name to vie for the individual national title come November.
Still, I think we need to see a little more consistency at this level before we say that Gregg is a contender for NCAA gold. While this is certainly one of the more impressive performances on his resume, Gregg will simply need to continue this type of dominance over the few month and a half.
But here's the thing: We certainly think he can.
Luckily, we'll see the Eagles' star low-stick again this upcoming weekend at the Olivet College National Preview Meet, a meet held at the course of the NCAA XC Championships East Lansing, Michigan -- a perfect opportunity to compete against some big names who he'll have to defeat in November.
If there’s anyone in Division Three who could potentially challenge Kassie Parker, it’s gotta be Fiona Smith (TSR #2). That, however, seemed like something that we already knew coming into this fall season.
Smith has been in the national contender conversation for a while now, but with another offseason of training, some departures to Division One and some more impressive performances – she’s become the main challenger to Parker at this point.
The Saint Benedict superstar always been prolific when it comes to running fast with little to no competition, but she’s continuing to impress us with how she dismantles her competition week-in and week-out.
Lindsay Cunningham is admittedly a challenging name to defeat. She's one of the best distance talents that Division Two has to offer, so I'm not sure that we should be looking too closely at Smith's loss to this Winona State ace.
But ultimately, I'm not sure that what we saw from Fiona Smith at the Griak Invitational really changed the dynamic between her and Parker. While Smith will certainly be a realistic challenger to Parker, it's clear that the Loras ace is still the national title favorite.
However, the most exciting part of this question is that Smith and Parker are actually going to race each other this weekend in East Lansing!
Parker’s been having a great season as well, so this will be a great test for both of these ladies to check each other out on the course where they’ll battle within just a few months time.
It's been no surprise to see that the Pomona-Pitzer men have started off their cross country season coming red-hot out of the gates. However, a unique takeaway about this year's Pomona-Pitzer squad is the sheer number of different names who could make their top-seven.
And yes, we knew that they were a deep squad coming into this season, but through a couple of races, established varsity All-Americans are being uprooted by others who are simply performing at a higher level.
In addition to the already-potent scorers on their roster like Lucas Florsheim, Colin Kirkpatrick, Derek Fearon, Jack Rosencrans and Ethan Widlansky, the Sagehens have built some incredible depth with some new (or recently developed) names who have found consistent varsity roles.
Ian Horsburgh and Owen Kobett have arguably been the most impressive as of late, emerging as top-three contributors for the Sagehens' lineup in their first two races this fall.
Are they on track to become lethal low-stick weapons, too?
Cameron Hatler and Nathaniel Getachew, both of whom qualified for the outdoor national meet in the steeplechase this past spring, have clearly translated their fitness onto the grass, running their way into Pomona-Pitzer's top-seven at the Cougar Challenge.
When you add someone like Bennett Booth-Genthe to the mix, who had an impressive race earlier this month at the UCR Invite, then you get 10 very solid names who could each do some serious damage.
There were already so many low-sticks and All-American weapons on this roster coming into this season. But seeing highly-ranked names falter outside of this team's top-seven lineup and outside of their scoring group has admittedly been a surprise.
And truthfully, we don't know whether or not that says more about the once-established returners or the rising stars of this program.
Who will make up their top-seven runners by the end of the season? Does anyone know?
That's truly a mystery to us.
Spearheaded by their talented low-stick in Genevieve DiBari, the Cougar Challenge gave us an impressive performance from the Pomona-Pitzer women.
However, this overhanging cloud of truth prefaces their defeat over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps: the Athenas sat out most of their best runners. So while we would like to say that it's a massive upset, we truthfully can't do that (yet).
That, of course, doesn’t take away from the Sagehens’ performance as whole! They still had a fairly solid day and left the meet with something to be proud of.
DiBari is a proven performer, having placed 25th at the cross country national meet last fall. She has continued to run well as her team's low-stick in 2022, recently earning a clutch 9th place finish. She was the top D3 finisher in a field dominated by Division Two opponents.
Fellow teammates Jenna Lange, Claire LeBlanc and Michaela Jones all finished within 10 seconds of each other as the Sagehens’ second, third and fourth scorers went 25-27-29 in quick succession. Katie Cline not far behind as the team's fifth scorer in 34th place.
LeBlanc and Jones each finished in the top-60 at last year's NCAA XC Championships and are running right on par with how they performed during last year’s regular season. With Lange and Cline running right along with those two women, then the Sagehens should be encouraged about the future holds for them, at least from a lineup structure perspective.
Admittedly, Lange and Cline struggled in the latter-half of the 2021 cross country season. However, if those two women, along with LeBlanc and Jones, maintain a strong pack throughout the rest of this season, then their potent team results may not be an anomaly.
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps may have one of the best women’s teams in Division Three, but Pomona-Pitzer is at a place where they can still be a top-10 team by the season’s end and be a legitimate threat to their cross-town rivals...and that’s a conservative estimate.