John Cusick
Oct 11, 202211 min
Additional edits and commentary by Garrett Zatlin
NOTE: These rankings are based on how a team fared throughout the entirety of a season, not just how they ran at the NCAA XC Championships.
Was not ranked in our last update.
First number indicates how much the team has moved in the rankings.
The second number indicates where the team was ranked in our last update.
Fraaza has stepped into this Lakers’ lineup and immediately made an impact.
The redshirt freshman has swallowed up the learning curve of racing on the grass, making him one of the country’s best runners in Division Two. Fraaza has collected a 9th place finish at the MSU Spartan Invitational followed by a 15th place finish at the Louisville Classic, two high-quality results in D1-centric fields.
These are Fraaza’s first two races in a Lakers uniform on the grass, and yet, it's almost like he's been doing this for years. His overall poise in these high-pressure settings is so darn impressive.
We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but Fraaza looks like a legitimate All-American contender this fall with the ability to be closer to Andrew Hylen rather his other teammates.
Trent Cochran make his season debut this past weekend at the Lewis Crossover and he didn’t at all disappoint.
A massive 2nd place individual finish in Romeoville slides this veteran athlete into our top-25. That result comes with head-to-head victories over teammate Josh Pierantoni (TSR #12) and Clayton Sayen (TSR #20), improving his stock.
Despite his poor end to the 2021 cross country season, which likely stemmed from some heat-related factors, Cochran has proven that he was a more-than-capable talent before that national meet. It’s evident that he is back to the same form that we saw from him in 2021.
TSR #24 feels like just the beginning for Cochran this season.
Congratulations, Noah Fisher.
You’re one of two athletes in these rankings to not move after the season's first month of competition.
Fisher placed 2nd at the All-Ohio XC Championships behind Walsh standout Zach Kreft. He followed that up with an 18th place finish at the Louisville Classic. Sure, an 18th place finish doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as 2nd, but it starts to sound a bit better when you consider that he was just two spots back from GVSU’s Andrew Hylen, a top-ranked talent in these rankings.
Fisher has run 29:19 for 10,000 meters, making him one of the country's stronger long distance runners. In theory, that means that he should only get better as the season progresses.
Don’t be surprised if this Oiler athlete moves his way up our individual rankings by the end of November. At the very least, he's a steady and consistent presence who is much better than some people may realize.
Emanuel entered our preseason rankings on our “Just Missed” section, but after just one race, we find ourselves talking about the Wildcat veteran.
Emanuel finished 2nd at the Cougar Challenge earlier this season, helping the Wildcats to a team victory where they scored just 32 points. While that is only just one race, it’s hard to overlook that this was a 54-second and 11-place improvement from 2021 at the same meet.
Emanuel would later finish 24th at the NCAA XC Championships that season.
If this Chico State star can continue racing like this and build his consistency throughout the regular season, then there’s a good chance that he’ll be better than that in 2022.
This New Mexico Highlands athlete has gone under the radar despite breaking out during the 2021 cross country season.
That trend has continued for Amor in 2022 as he has been very good early this season, but doesn’t appear to have captured anyone’s attention thus far.
Well, not until recently.
Amor finished 2nd, behind Afewerki Zeru (TSR #4), at the 15th Annual UCCS Rust-Buster. He later threw down an excellent 4th place finish at the Missouri Southern Stampede against some really good competition in Gidieon Kimutai and Ryan Riddle.
Amor has proven that he can race with some of the country’s best distance talents and doesn't seem afraid of the challenge when big names are in the race. While he has yet to take down any true D2 standouts (outside of JP Rutledge who had an "off" day), his combination of racing savvy and undeniable courage makes Amor a name to look out for in 2022
Through the first couple of races of his 2022 cross country season, Clayton Sayen looks like he was ranked pretty fairly through his first couple races so far this fall.
At the Griak Invitational, he finished 2nd overall behind the likes of D3 star, Ethan Gregg. And while the competition level was a step down from years prior at Griak, it’s hard to argue that it was a strong effort.
Then, at the Lewis Crossover, Sayen finished 6th overall in the best field that he’s faced this season, only behind Dayton Brown, Trent Cochran, Josh Pierantoni and Wyatt McIntyre.
That’s some pretty good company for a 1500 meter specialist as well as some solid early-season consistency. Sayen hasn't been amazing this year, but he's been solid, and there's good reason for us to believe he will continue trending upwards for the rest of the year.
Duncan Fuehne has not yet raced this season.
Loic Scomparin has not yet raced this season
Isaiah Rodarte has not yet raced this season
Joshua Chepkesir was one of the outside national title favorites when we released the preseason version of our individual D2 rankings.
However, since then, we’ve seen this UNC-Pembroke athlete compete just once...and it seems suffice to say that we haven’t been all that impressed. Chepkesir finished 22nd at the Queen City Invite, more than 90 seconds behind the winner.
There’s still time for him to move up in our rankings again. Talent, after all, doesn't just disappear. But for now, we have to move him backwards a good bit.
Ransom Allen is another athlete who has seemingly slid under the radar this season.
After a huge performance at last year’s NCAA XC Championships (where he placed 25th), Allen is back for more in 2022. Finishes of 4th place and 6th place at the 3rd Annual Northwood Invite and LHU XC Invite, respectively, are good performances, but they didn’t move the needle for us.
That was, however, until we saw him at Lucian Rosa this past weekend.
Allen took home runner-up honors behind Afewerki Zeru in that race while helping his team to a 3rd place finish. He also took down some really solid supporting scorers.
Allen has the talent level to be one of the best in the country, but he has yet to truly wow us with any major performance or with a victory over any names. This still seems like a good spot for him, but we just need to see a bit more.
This Missouri Southern athlete was expected to be a part of the Lions’ three-headed scoring monster that would lead this team throughout 2022.
So far this season, we haven’t quite seen the same JP Rutledge that we saw during his 2021 fall campaign. Yes, an 8th place finish at the Missouri Southern Stampede is respectable, but one could argue that he should have been better. You can also say the same thing about his race at the Chile Pepper XC Festival where he finished 31st overall.
Rutledge is still one of Division Two’s top runners, but he might be closer to the top-20 range rather than the top-10 range that we originally had thought...assuming he rallies later this fall.
This Augustana standout is moving back three spots this time by no fault of his own.
Hartman recently debuted taking home a 3rd place finish at the Defender Holiday Inn Express Classic. Nothing special, nothing terrible.
You can attribute this ranking to other athletes simply running very well compared to Hartman’s debut race in 2022.
We finally got to see this Colorado Christian veteran race on the grass this season and he produced exactly what we expected from him at the Lewis Crossover.
Pierantoni finished 3rd overall in one of the better fields of competition during 2022 so far. This doesn't come as much surprise, but this is more so a confirmation of how we feel about Pierantoni moving forward.
A small improvement still doesn’t feel like it’s enough, but with just one race under his belt this season, we can’t put him inside our top-10…yet.
If you want to go unnoticed for racing well, then we’d tell you to follow in the footsteps of Alaska Anchorage’s Cole Nash.
So far this season, Nash has two victories, one at the Blue & Gold Race, the other at the Seawolf Throwdown. And while those victories have just been dual meets, the margin of combined victory for Nash was greater than a minute.
Nash also displayed his elite level of talent at the WWU Bill Roe Classic where he finished 2nd overall. He was the first athlete competing for a school who crossed the line while holding off Western Washington’s Kevin McDermott and Andrew Oslin by 12 seconds.
There is plenty to like about Nash so far this season, but if we could ask for one thing, it’d be that he races some elite competition.
I’ll be the first to admit, I was skeptical of Andrew Hylen after his 2021 national meet performance. That 12th place All-American finish was fantastic, but it was also a clear outlier based on his regular season performances.
However, it's nice to see Hylen pick up right where he left off last year.
His early-season finishes of 8th place at the MSU Spartan Invitational and then 16th at the Louisville Classic have only confirmed how good we think Hylen can be this season. They've also shown us far greater scoring consistency in the regular season portion of his resume.
And for what it’s worth, Hylen was the second D2 athlete across the line at Michigan State and the fourth D2 athlete across the line at Louisville.
Hylen is just flat-out great when it comes to racing on the grass. He understands how to navigate strong fields and when he finally faces a meet of just D2 athletes, we truly think that’s when we will see just how good he is.
The former Queens athlete has found a new home at Mississippi College and his past results in the Division Two realm make him an immediate top-25 runner on the grass.
Becker finished 10th at last year’s NCAA XC Championships and hasn’t missed a beat since transferring to Mississippi College. He finished a tremendous 8th place at the Chile Pepper XC Festival, sandwiched between the top-two Missouri Southern athletes.
We'll admit, when Becker was left off of Queens (NC) roster, we had anticipated that his time in the NCAA had come to a close. Obviously, that was only because he had transferred.
Becker's experience against some of the best athletes in the country, paired with his phenomenal success on the outdoor oval last spring, already makes this Mississippi College athlete an immediate national-caliber threat.
Have yourself a day, Zach Kreft!
The former Notre Dame talent wasted no time making his presence felt for this Walsh team. He won the All-Ohio XC Championships, but that’s not the race that has sent him up these rankings.
Instead, we want to highlight how he finished 8th overall in the “Gold” section at the Lehigh Paul Short Run. Yes, in the same field which featured men from Villanova, Georgetown, North Carolina and Utah State.
The next-best Division Two runner in that field?
Scott Nutter of Wingate, all the way back in 43rd place and 21 seconds behind.
This huge run from Kreft immediately throws him into the fold of some of Division Two’s best runners. This might be a large jump from our “Just Missed” section to our top-10, but when you race like he has this season, there’s a real reason to believe that he’s one of D2’s most elite distance athletes right now.
Dayton Brown moves up 11 spots in our first rankings update and deservedly so.
Coming into the season, there was some hesitancy about how much rust Brown would need to shake off. That's largely because we haven't seen him race on the grass since the fall of 2019!
And truthfully, that rust was evident at the MSU Spartan Invitational where he finished a modest 31st place overall.
However, with the rust knocked off, we can now see that Brown is looking like one of the nation’s best D2 runners. That's because Brown won the Lewis Crossover and took down Trent Cochran (TSR #24), Josh Pierantoni (TSR #12) and Clayton Sayen (TSR #20) in the process.
What Brown has done on the grass so far this season speaks for itself and we have no doubt that he’ll be a threat at the NCAA XC Championships in December. We'd still like to him run at this level more consistently throughout the entirety of the season, but gosh, his raw fitness is clearly at an all-time high right now.
This is what we expected from the Missouri Southern athlete coming into 2022.
A 2nd place finish at the Missouri Southern Stampede and a 9th place finish at the Chile Pepper XC Festival (third D2 athlete) are on par with our projections for Ryan Riddle.
There’s not much else to analyze as we thought Riddle would be one of the best D2 runners in the country -- and so far, he has proven that through two races.
Time away from racing on the grass is always a tricky proposition.
However, for Gidieon Kimutai, it doesn’t appear to have affected him in any major way.
That's because this Missouri Southern superstar won the Missouri Southern Stampede by 16 seconds. He later finished 7th at the Chile Pepper XC Festival and was the first Division Two athlete across the line in that field.
It’s fairly obvious that Kimutai is still one of the elite talents in Division Two and his previous national meet experience makes him a threat to win the individual title in December despite not moving any spots this time around.
Zeru raced early in September at the UCCS Annual Rust Buster, taking home the victory by 29 seconds. That was already enough for us to know that Zeru is in incredible shape.
Luckily for us, that’s not the only race we’ve seen him run. Zeru took home the individual title at the Lucian Rosa Invitational this past weekend, running away from our TSR #15 runner, Ransom Allen, by nine seconds.
We kept this Mountain Lion veteran at TSR #4 this time around, mainly because both of these results were what we expected. We’ll better understand how good Zeru is when he faces off against UCCS’ RMAC and South Central foes in the near future.
Beraki has raced just once this season and it was at the Joe I. Vigil Invite in early September.
He won that race by 33 seconds over his teammates and while that’s a considerable amount, it doesn't tell us anything new about the Adams State stalwart.
We're hoping to see him against some better competition in the coming weeks, but until then, we will put Beraki at our TSR #3 spot.
Dillon Powell has not yet raced this season.
We try not to overreact to early-season racing, but Tanner Chada has been unbelievably impressive in his two races so far this season.
At the MSU Spartan Invitational, Chada took home the individual victory by toppling D3 megastar Alex Phillip by a whopping 26 seconds. He followed that performance with another dominant victory at the Louisville Classic, outlasting Auburn’s Ryan Kinnae and the duo of Milo Greder and Tyler Wirth, both from Cincinnati.
There was plenty of chatter about Chada being the best D2 runner in the nation coming into the preseason. And while we ultimately decided on putting him at our TSR #3 spot in our preseason rankings, it’s clear that Chada has proven that he should be the runner to beat as of right now.
Zach Kreft (Walsh)
Jan Lukas Becker (Mississippi College)
Jack Emanuel (Chico State)
Trent Cochran (Colorado Christian)
Koby Fraaza (Grand Valley State)
Caleb Futter (Grand Valley State)
Clement Duigou (Adams State)
Reece Smith (NW Missouri)
Cade Michael (Western Colorado)
Dais Malebana (Adams State)
Drew Kolodge (Michigan Tech)
Scott Nutter (Wingate)
Issac Prather (Concord)
Paul Kraemer (Embry-Riddle)
Reece Smith (NW Missouri)
Nixon Korir (Azusa Pacific)
Xavier Smith (Fresno Pacific)
Cameron Allan (Adams State)
Clement Duigou (Adams State)
Miguel Coca (Adams State)
Matthew Storer (Colorado Christian)
Caleb Futter (Grand Valley State)
Bryan Banuelos (Fresno Pacific)
Joao Pereira (Charleston (WV))
Wyatt McIntyre (Illinois-Springfield)
Luke Julian (Colorado Mines)
Henry Klitzke (Augustana)
Simon Kelati (Western Colorado)
Myles Bach (Nebraska-Kearney)
Tyler Buchanan (Wayne State (MI))
Sam Wilhelm (Alabama-Huntsville)
Ward Ries (Edinboro)
Evan Graff (UC-Colorado Springs)
Kevin McDermott (Western Washington)
Charlie Dannatt (Simon Fraser)
Diego Contreras (Pittsburg State)
Silas Eckenroad (Lee (Tenn.))
Adan Rodriguez (Lee (Tenn.))
Will Stone (Lee (Tenn.))
Salvador Capetillo (Azusa Pacific)
Brayden McLaughlin (Chico State)
Rory Abberton (Chico State)