TSR Collaboration
Nov 20, 202220 min
Brett: “With the exception of two of the greatest D3 athletes to grace this Earth, the NCAA XC Championships were filled with shock after shock, with brutal conditions opening the door wide open for some eye-opening results.”
Kevin: “Cross country doesn’t usually have a lot of upsets compared to other sports, but this year’s D3 NCAA XC Championships, on both the men’s and women’s sides, proved that we should still expect the unexpected.”
Hannah: “Team races were wildly unpredictable while the individual races were wildly predictable. Also, Kassie Parker is the G.O.AT.”
Brett: Seeing Pomona-Pitzer fall down to 5th was one of the least expected outcomes I could have imagined coming from this national meet.
At worst, I thought MIT and maybe North Central could overtake them, but the Sagehens just never put themselves in contention to win the meet. They were 17th at the first mile, 11th at mile two, 6th through 4.6k, 7th at 7k and ultimately gained some momentum to finish 5th overall.
It was a very shocking result for a very talented team whose depth and talent could not overcome the harsh conditions of East Lansing, Michigan.
Kevin: The Johns Hopkins women were certainly underdogs this year, but when you consider the recent history of this team under Coach Bobby Van Allen, it doesn’t feel absolutely shocking that they won, especially given their small margin of victory and the number of other crazy things that happened at this meet.
The Pomona-Pitzer men falling to 5th was a bit of a shock. It seemed possible that they would struggle, but I at least thought that a podium finish would have been close to a guarantee.
I also thought that if they had a tough day, that it would come in the form of some of their athletes dropping back late in the race. But the fact that they never looked to be in contention at any point just felt weird.
Hannah: I said early in the season that we should never doubt Coach Bobby Van Allen...but then went on to doubt Bobby Van Allen when predicting Johns Hopkins' overall finish.
Shame on me.
It wasn’t completely ludicrous to think that the women from Johns Hopkins could win. They had Alex Ross who was in the top-five of our rankings all season long. Sara Stephenson and Paloma Hancock also made top scoring appearances from time to time.
However, the difference maker was Stephenson having an incredible day. Fellow teammate Sydney Fridel also came up huge for this team with her 30th place finish.
I think Pomona-Pitzer running poorly was more surprising. We saw them face tough teams like Wartburg and North Central early in the season and come out on top. They were battle tested.
It feels like a cop out to blame the extreme weather on their poor finish, but it shouldn’t be ignored. Imagine coming from California to Michigan with snow and a windchill of 10 degrees.
That’s gotta play with you a bit.
Brett: Well, considering that I was a firm believer in Pomona-Pitzer (to a fault) this season, I would have said 10%.
When you have an arsenal that is as impressively deep as what the Sagehens have, it was really difficult to fathom them not winning, let alone not ending up on the podium, to boot.
But lo and behold, I may have put too much stock into the flashiness of the Sagehens who really struggled to put themselves in contention, at all.
As for MIT, the Engineers have gained so much success from a pack-running strategy in their last two cross country seasons, so it was shocking to see Sam Acquaviva in particular gunning it from the front group.
And don’t even get me started on Ryan Wilson!
That impeccable race execution from the 800 meter specialist was a huge factor in the Engineers’ dominating success. And honestly, calling him an “800 meter specialist” after a 5th place finish at the NCAA XC Championships feels like we’re selling him really short.
Kevin: For as many things as I got wrong in my predictions, I did have the MIT men winning, so I’ll say 55%.
They won every meet that they ran in this year by a comfortable margin – and they ran in some very competitive fields!
In a way, both MIT and Pomona-Pitzer have pretty similar identities where the order of their top runners looked to be fairly interchangeable, and the Sagehens were arguably deeper on paper, especially beyond their top-seven.
Pomona-Pitzer very clearly underperformed this weekend and never really settled in, but you have to give a ton of credit to the Engineers who earned their first national title in school history.
On a day where a ton of people fell back hard as a result of the conditions, all seven of MIT’s guys had solid days, and that was the key to their 47-point margin of victory.
Hannah: I’ll say 50%. We knew that Sam Acquaviva was a top-15 guy and we also had Andrew Mah, Matthew Kearney and Ryan Wilson on our "Just Missed" and "Honorable Mentions" lists.
Ryan Wilson getting 5th was not something any of us predicted. It was a massive improvement from his 106th place finish at the D3 National Preview. With Matthew Kearney getting 14th place to give MIT three guys in the top-15, it was hard to imagine another team matching that firepower.
The Engineers were just a very consistent team on a day where not a lot of teams can say the same thing.
Brett: I mentioned this once before, but we really haven’t seen Johns Hopkins run against some of the top Division Three women’s teams for most of the season, so it’s been a little difficult to gauge where they compare, relatively speaking.
It looks like we may have been underrating their team’s prowess all season long, but some of their ladies in particular really stepped up.
After Alex Ross snagged a very predictable 4th place finish, Sara Stephenson rebounded from her 56th place at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships to place 9th this year.
That was a huge result which gave the Blue Jays not one, but two low-sticks to boost their overall firepower.
Even though she faded a little bit throughout the race, Sydney Fridel was another key contributor, finishing 30th overall after resting the Mideast regional meet – maybe that decision paid off in a sneaky-good way!
Kevin: I agree with Brett that it was hard to know exactly how good this Johns Hopkins team was because of their meet schedule, and maybe we should have given them the benefit of the doubt.
It always seemed like there was a little bit of a drop-off after Alex Ross and Sara Stephenson, but the supporting cast stepped up in a big way.
Sydney Fridel had a huge day to give the Blue Jays a third All-American, Katherine Priu had a much-improved performance compared to last week and Paloma Hancock, while slightly behind where we might have expected her to be, still held on well enough to give her team a chance at gold.
Now, admittedly, the Blue Jays did get some help as we saw Frances Schaeffler from U. of Chicago’s drop 97 spots in the last 1000 meters – but the Maroons still wouldn’t have been in a position to win without the individual battles won by their whole scoring lineup.
Hannah: I was very outspoken this season about how I wasn’t happy with the fact that Johns Hopkins never went to major races. Their racing schedule made it so hard to judge when we had other D3 teams who faced each other three or four times during the season.
Also, Sara Stephenson was a little all over the place this fall, so I believed that she wasn’t super reliable. She proved me massively wrong by finishing 9th yesterday. We knew that this team had good runners, but the uncertainty was if they could all race well on the same day.
Of course, Bobby Van Allen was always going to get them there.
Why would I ever doubt that?
Brett: I hate to harp on conditions being the main factor in a race’s outcomes, but it seems really apparent that they influenced the race’s results in two main ways.
The first being the struggles of the top-heavy West region as a whole, and the second being the extreme unpredictability of the overall results.
Seeing the Pomona-Pitzer men place 5th and the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women place 10th were both major underperformances that we wouldn't have expected, at all.
Seeing only two All-Americans from the West region for each gender is another representation of the condition’s potential impact as well.
Kevin: It absolutely played a noticeable factor.
We always see people fall off at national meets in part because of fatigue at the end of a long training cycle, but this year it felt different.
When you look at the teams that train in warmer climates, a lot of them struggled, which makes intuitive sense. It’s not that they aren’t “tough” or anything like that, it’s just a shock to the body to undergo such a dramatic change in your racing environment.
We saw this reflected not only with the Pomona-Pitzer men and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women, but also with Emory finishing 21st and Lynchburg finishing 30th on the men’s side. Those teams were ranked in our “Just Missed” and “Honorable Mention” sections, respectively.
Hannah: It definitely made an impact.
Outside of warmer weather teams struggling, we saw a lot of runners (Kassie Parker not included) start more conservatively as they figured out the footing and hid from the wind.
In the mens race, there wasn’t a breakaway pack until after 4k and even then, there was still a pack of five until around the 6k mark. I think some of the men (Alex Philip) played it smart by letting other runners (Ethan Gregg) take the race out and expend energy fighting the weather.
You also saw a handful of men taking different lines and tangents as they tried not to step in ankle deep snow. That does make a difference of racing over 8k.
Kevin: On the men’s side, I'm definitely saying the SUNY Geneseo men.
We had lofty preseason expectations for the Knights, but they did not deliver on those summer hopes for the bulk of this cross country season.
They lost to Case Western at the Mike Woods Invite, finished 38 points behind RPI at the Rowan Interregional Border Battle and they looked significantly less dominant at the SUNYAC XC Championships and the Niagara regional meet than they did last year.
By the time the national meet came around, we viewed them as a pretty good team, but not one that could contend for a podium spot. But in one fell swoop, they showed that class is permanent, and that the regular season isn’t what gets remembered.
On the women’s side, I’ll say Carleton.
We knew how good Clara Mayfield and Hannah Preisser were, but we had some concerns about their depth and their high top-five time-spread.
But the Knights emphatically put those concerns to rest this weekend. Phoebe Ward had the second highest finish of any fifth scorer in the field while Mary Blanchard had the highest finish of any seventh runner at the national meet.
Brett: I definitely agree with Kevin.
The SUNY Geneseo men had a massive day relative to expectations by landing on the podium with their 3rd place team finish. To be frank, they were not even close to being on my radar to contend for a podium finish.
Now, that said, recognizing that Ezra Ruggles had a return to top form was absolutely a key component to the Knights’ powerful overperformance. He had struggled in the earlier parts of the season, but rallied when it mattered most, placing a crucial 33rd overall while teammate Alex Hillyard was just behind him in 39th place.
Those two men were key components to transforming SUNY Geneseo from a top-10 contender to finishing as a podium team.
I’ll give some other writers more room to discuss, but I’d also like to shout out the John Carroll men as well. Admittedly, we’ve been hard on them this fall, pushing the Blue Streaks to step up this entire season while placing heavy expectations on their back after a 4th place finish at the 2021 cross country national meet.
While their Great Lakes Regional XC Championships were a good step in the right direction, rallying back to a second-consecutive 4th place finish was a heroic performance that I also did not expect in the slightest.
Changing gears to the women’s side, I was pretty certain heading into the national meet that our top-four ranked teams (Wartburg, U. of Chicago, SUNY Geneseo and Johns Hopkins) would remain as the four podium teams.
However, in a certain group chat article, I was very high on one team that had the ability to out-perform their ranking if everything went right for them: the Carleton Knights.
Sure enough, they came through in a huge way, soaring to a 4th place team finish and landing on the podium.
Everything we wanted out of Hannah Preisser (TSR #16) as the Knights’ second scorer panned out perfectly as she finished 15th overall to aid Clara Mayfield (TSR #4) who earned an outstanding 3rd place finish.
That was an extremely impressive finish by Preisser as the top freshman in the field. She will surely take over Mayfield’s role over the next couple of years as the team’s top low-stick.
Sophie McManus, Libby Rowland and Phoebe Ward all executed very well to round out the Knights’ scoring which was exactly what they needed to do in order to pull off their incredible podium performance.
Hannah: SUNY Geneseo is the obvious answer for the men, but John Carroll is also a great answer. We saw them celebrating like crazy because even they knew that a 4th place finish was a surprise.
We had them on the edge of our top-10 all season long, but we did say that Alex Phillip delivering one point is a massive advantage in a race this big.
Outside of Philip, the rise of Joe Backus finishing in 31st place was huge for this team. He went from being the Blue Streak's seventh runner at the OAC XC Championships to being their second scorer on the national stage and an All-American two weeks later.
That’s massive (and impressive) progression.
Ryan Champa, Barrett Scheatzle and Adam Shah having a 15-second time-spread between them also helped quite a bit. To get all of their scorers in the top-80 was something that I would not have predicted for the Blue Streaks.
For the women, I am not surprised in any of the teams in the top-four, but I am surprised in the order. Obviously, we expected either U. of Chicago or Wartburg to take home the win.
For Wartburg to beat Carleton by only one point for 3rd is not something that I would have expected. And yes, we talked about it above, but Johns Hopkins winning the title was probably the biggest shock of the day on the women's side.
Kevin: Definitely Calvin. This team placed 5th at the Great Lakes regional meet, losing to Mount Union and Otterbein, and just managed to sneak into the national field.
But the Knights ended up finishing 16th overall, and were the second-best squad among the Great Lakes teams.
It wasn’t shocking that Brandan Knepper was close to All-American honors, but Nick Henz placing 64th after finishing 23rd at his regional meet was huge. Plus, their backend scorers stayed high enough in the field for the Knights to finish in the middle of the pack.
We’ve talked some about the teams who were negatively affected by the weather conditions, but Calvin was one of the teams who took advantage of the early-winter terrain to make a statement.
Brett: Man, Kevin’s been stealing some of my answers here.
Shoutout to Calvin for their fantastic day.
I know that I’ve given the West region plenty of flak in this article, but I’ll give some recognition to the George Fox men who had a pretty solid day.
The Bruins were a team that I tabbed to finish somewhere been 20th and 25th in the team standings. However, they ended up placing 17th, just right behind Calvin.
Considering that they were in 30th place through the two-mile mark, it was quite impressive to see their movement to 17th place in the span of just under three miles. Kudos to them on maintaining a 19.9-second top-five time-spread.
Not to mention, they are a team comprised of SIX sophomores and one freshman.
Maybe they’ll be a sneaky team to watch out for in the next year or two...
Hannah: I’ll agree with Brett and say George Fox.
I believe this was their first time ever qualifying for the national meet as a team. For them to finish 17th on a day that did not play out well for most West region teams was awesome to see.
We did not have them ranked (or listed in any section) and the USTFCCCA Coaches' Poll had them ranked 23rd. They did not have a low-stick to lead them, but instead relied on a low time-spread to lead them to success.
The Bruins' top runner, Alex Mills, was 85th overall. That result did not break this team as Mills' teammates followed closely behind him. Not many teams can say that they have a top-five time-spread of less than 20 seconds.
This team should only get better as time goes on, because like Brett said, they are very young. If they can get one runner to get in the top-40 then they stand a chance of breaking into the top-10.
Kevin: For the women, I’ll go with another Great Lakes team in Hope College.
This is a team that we had in our top-10 rankings during the preseason, but they fell back with some tough days throughout the season, including a 3rd place regional meet finish that was 46 points behind John Carroll.
Luckily, they bounced back very well at the national meet, finishing 13th overall which was higher than anyone else from the Great Lakes region.
One of the keys to the Dutch outperforming expectations was that their 3-4-5 runners all finished within one second of each other! That’s how you limit excessive scoring and raise your floor.
Brett: My choice might sound a bit odd given that their low-stick brings them one point, but the Loras Duhawks finishing 18th was a pretty solid performance on their part.
One reason why I’m choosing Loras for my pick was that this was their first national meet appearance (on the women’s side) in 25 years, so finishing in the top-20 is a pretty good return to the national scene for this team.
In the few years that we’ve covered the Division Three scene, the Loras women have been right on the fringe of qualifying for the national meet as a team, and rightfully demonstrated this weekend that they belonged on this stage.
Behind Parker’s exploits as a national champion (more on that in a below question), Brianna Renner was within striking distance of All-American honors, finishing 54th, which was another fantastic performance as well.
Hannah: I am going to say Pomona-Pitzer in 11th.
For how bad the West region teams performed, the women from Pomona-Pitzer might be the one exception. They performed up to expectations which was impressive in these conditions.
They were led by Abigail Louise in 21st place, making her the top finisher from the West region. She avenged her loss to Natalie Bitetti and Riley Martel-Phillips last weekend as well as her loss to Meredith Bloss and Anika Kimme at the SCIAC XC Championships.
The Sagehens also had two other seniors with nice runs as Claire LeBlanc and Jenna Lange placed 70th and 75th, respectively. That latter result was a huge jump for Lange who finished 140th at last year's national meet. Sometimes, national meet experience pays off.
Their scoring was rounded out by junior Michaela Jones and freshmen Rhea Braganza. Those two got some great experience which is important as they might have to lead their team next year and beyond.
Kevin: I think so. This was a staggering margin of victory that you don’t see very often, especially when you consider how great of a talent Fiona Smith is.
Parker is a five-time national champion now, and has several runner-up finishes along with 14 total All-American honors.
You could make a case for Missy Buttry as the G.O.A.T – she has achieved an incredible amount – but I think it’s time to give the nod to Parker in this debate.
Brett: With the way that Kassie Parker has continued to improve and progress throughout her career, I don’t see why not. I would say that she's the greatest Division Three distance runner of all time.
However, Missy Buttry’s Division Three record of running the 5000 meters in 15:37 is simply an unreal achievement, in context.
I’m not saying that Parker needs to get the record to be considered as someone who was better than Buttry, but if she’s gonna be claiming records and winning national titles left and right, then the argument would absolutely lean more heavily in Parker’s favor.
Hannah: Missy Buttry and Christy Cazzola might have something to say about this, but yeah, I think it's Parker. I was nervous when she broke away from the pack early yesterday, only because the conditions were so awful and I thought that the brutal race environment was the only thing that could beat her.
Parker obviously prevailed, winning by 43 seconds which might be the largest margin of victory ever (unsure, just speculating). It's certainly the largest margin of victory from the last few years.
She has just been untouchable this fall and we’ll probably see that continue on the track.
Kevin: He’s one of the best ever and has the potential to be at the very top by the end of the outdoor track season.
With this win, Phillip has now won two national titles in cross country and three on the track. He has the potential to add four more to that total if he wins the 3k and 5k titles on the indoor oval as well as the 5k and 10k titles on the outdoor oval – all of which is very possible.
A big thing to watch for Phillip this track season is that he is fairly close to the D3 records for the indoor and outdoor 5k, as well as the 10k. If any of those records fall in addition to a couple more national titles, I would be willing to give him the crown.
Brett: It’s becoming increasingly more clear that Alex Phillip knows how to win in nearly any setting of championship racing. He can thrive with blazing fast paces, horrid cross country conditions and even tactical showdowns on the track.
If he grabs some D3 records along the way, then that would be fantastic. But if he keeps up this pace at seizing national titles with ease, then there’s gonna be no question about his status as the all-time G.O.A.T.
Hannah: I feel like calling him the G.O.A.T. is premature.
He has zero D3 records. He also hasn’t been entirely perfect on the national stage, either. For instance, he placed 8th in the 5000 meters race at the NCAA Outdoor Championships (2022) and was 5th in the 10,000 meters at the 2021 outdoor national meet.
Sure, he has two cross country national titles and three on the track, but I don’t think that makes him the best ever.
Just in recent memory, I can name Druv Patel from North Central and Ian Lamere from UW-Plateville who have had just as impressive careers as Phillip so far.
I’ll give him the top-10 status and possibly even a top-five spot…but not the G.O.A.T., no way.
Kevin: I have to say Olivia Rosenstein of MIT. Her 12th place finish this weekend was her second race since last year’s national meet, and the other result was a 13th place CONFERENCE MEET finish from three weeks ago.
Even though she was an All-American last year, we didn’t have a ton of confidence that she would be in that conversation this year, let alone come close to a top-10 finish.
Brett: I gotta go with Caroline McMartin of Central College. Her previous best finish at the cross country national meet was 118th, and this weekend’s 24th place finish was a terrific destruction of that former performance.
After finishing 20th at the Augustana Interregional, as well as 11th at the Midwest Regional XC Championships, McMartin wasn’t someone who I would have expected to be an All-American, let alone finish as high as she did!
Kudos to her on a great performance which should give the steeplechase national qualifier some momentum heading into the track season.
Hannah: I will also say Caroline McMartin from Central College. She was 24th yesterday.
That is super impressive when you consider that her season wasn’t anything spectacular. She was 20th at the Augustana Interregional, placed 7th at the American Rivers Conference XC Championships and finished 11th at the Midwest regional meet.
If you compare that result to last year, then her recent All-American honor becomes even more impressive. That's because she finished 118th at the 2021 national meet. She even ran faster on the national stage this year which not many people can say as Louisville was a fast course and this year featured horrible conditions.
Kevin: Ryan Wilson. The last time he ran on this course was at D3 Pre-Nationals where he was 106th overall. He showed some improvement with a 16th place finish at the Connecticut College Invite and a 2nd place finish at the NEWMAC XC Championships, but he still looked like a borderline All-American at that point.
Of course, he was firing on all cylinders at the national meet and ultimately moved up from 71st at the mile mark to 11th place at 6.3k to eventually 5th place at the finish line.
Not bad for an 800 meter guy!
Resting him at MIT’s regional meet definitely seemed to work out as he looked fresher than almost anybody else in the field.
Brett: I'm gonna break the rules here. I’m going with a pair of teammates in Logan Bocovich and Will Kelly, both from St. Olaf.
Bocovich’s 8th place finish and Kelly’s 12th place finish were the two individual results that I was most shocked by from the Division Three races this weekend. I had tabbed Bocovich to barely sneak into All-American honors, but my goodness, both of these men obliterated my expectations!
They finished 5th and 6th at the North Regional XC Championships last weekend, which was really solid, but they both managed to peak when it truly mattered.
The Oles walked away with the third-best 1-2 punch in the nation, which is no small feat when you consider the number of high-quality scoring duos that we've seen in Division Three.
Hannah: John Lucey for Williams stepped up when his teammate, Elias Lindgren, had a somewhat tough day. Lucey finished 18th overall which is great for someone who I didn’t even have in the top-40.
The Ephs standout placed 4th at the NESCAC XC Championships and was 12th at the Mideast regional meet. His finish really helped Williams hold on to finish 6th place in the team standings, only six points behind the defending champions, Pomona-Pitzer.
Brett: In the men’s race, some of the top names who we haven’t yet mentioned in this article ran extremely true to the way that we know their abilities to be.
Ethan Gregg tried to lean on his aerobic strength from the front, demonstrating lots of grit to ultimately hang on for 4th place. With his impressive jump to a national contender status this fall, Gregg’s great abilities in the longer distance events on the track will be exemplified in 2023 on his quest for a national title.
Elias Lindgren made a heroic late-race move to string things out, but ultimately faltered over the final kilometer, covering it in a grueling 3:53 to hang on for 23rd place. The dude has some serious courage and we have to give him respect for sticking true to the strategy that he knows best.
Christian Patzka demonstrated his savvy mix of aerobic strength and championship-racing kicking speed, finishing as the national meet runner-up and giving Alex Phillip a serious run for his money. He’s only a sophomore and has some very impressive accolades to his name already. He’s looking to be one of the next “top dogs” in Division Three.
Kevin: I want to give a spotlight now to some names who I could have mentioned when talking about individuals who out-performed their expectations. I am talking about Caleb Silver (Central College) and Paul Suflita (SUNY Brockport) on the men’s side and Kayla Aalpoel (George Fox) on the women’s side.
Silver was 52nd at the Augustana Interregional Invitational, finished 22nd at the American Rivers XC Championships and settled for 13th place at the Midwest Regional XC Championships. But despite those results, Silver ultimately finished 25th overall on Saturday, his best performance of the season, by far.
Meanwhile, Suflita was the 8th place finisher at the Niagara regional meet and had some solid performances throughout the regular season. However, there was nothing on his resume that indicated that he would be an All-American. He brought his “A” game to the national meet to finish comfortably within those All-American spots in 28th place.
In the case of Aalpoel, who finished 32nd, she gave some indication that she had the talent to be in that range, finishing 15th at D3 Pre-Nationals back in October.
However, it looked like she didn’t have much momentum going into this weekend as she had dropped back to 15th place at the West Regional XC Championships. She is also a true freshman, so to already have the ability to bounce back like that at this level is pretty incredible. She’ll certainly be one to watch in the next few years.
Hannah: Brett already mentioned it, but it was really awesome to see Christian Patzka finish 2nd overall. Winning the North region title last weekend was an indication that he was fit and ready to go, but I wouldn’t have expected this. Finishing three seconds behind Phillip, a two-time cross country national champion, is a very big performance for this sophomore.
Patzka placed 2nd at the D3 National Preview and the WIAC XC Championships, but he lost to Ethan Gregg both times. I also expected more men from the East region to perform better.
I know on the broadcast that they credited the snow (and being from Wisconsin) for giving Patzka that boost -- and maybe there is some truth to that -- but he has also been so consistent all season long.
For the women, I want to shout out Clara Mayfield. She has had to race Fiona Smith six times this season. She was getting beaten by 30+ seconds every time, but yesterday, she was only six seconds behind Smith. Oh, and she finished 3rd overall!
I would have expected some other runners like Annika Urban, Alex Ross or Anna Tucker to fit their way in between them, but Mayfield is tough, tough, tough.
Yesterday was also an improvement from her 10th place finish at last year's cross country national meet. Mayfield has never finished outside the top-30 at the national meet which proves to us that she is consistent and never lets the pressure get to her.
I think a lot of the buzz will go to Parker, and rightfully so, but Mayfield also deserves some credit for having herself a day.