John Cusick
Oct 25, 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 or at a singular meet.
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.
The Simon Fraser middle distance talent has wound up in our top-25 after some very impressive racing.
Dannatt won the San Francisco State Invitational just before we released the first update of rankings and he was later awarded with a spot in our “Honorable Mentions” section. But over the weekend, Dannatt improved his stock even further, finishing 7th overall at D2 Pre-Nationals in his best performance on the grass in a Red Leaf singlet.
This SFU standout has raced with the elites on the track, but this is certainly an uptick in his fitness level compared to last year. Given his middle distance focus, we weren’t entirely sure how good he would be over the course of an 8k or 10k course.
But so far, he has transitioned the rolling hills and dirt seamlessly.
Dannatt will clearly be a competitive name on the grass this season, but the question we beg to ask is...just how good can he be? Especially over 10,000 meters?
At the very least, we think he’s a top-25 talent as we slate him here at TSR #25. We want to see him run well again in another strong field, but our confidence in Dannatt is building.
Simon Kelati has flown under the radar this season due to the fact that, prior to this past weekend, Western Colorado had competed in just two dual meets. He won both of those dual meets, but it was hard to determine any kind of value from those results.
That, however, has clearly changed as we’ve got Kelati coming in at TSR #24 thanks to his performance at D2 Pre-Nationals.
Kelati finished 6th overall this past weekend and solidified himself as the Mountaineers' top runner the rest of the way. He’s moved up in distance from the oval and much like Dannatt, he wasn’t really considered to be a long distance athlete despite a few decent 5k marks.
In the grand scheme of things, prior to this weekend, we hadn’t truly been able to see what kind of runner Kelati can be. But on Saturday, he flashed his true potential as top low-stick on the grass...and this may be just the beginning for him.
We’ve been big fans of Luke Julian for a few years now. It was tough to leave him out of our preseason rankings, but there were only so many names who we could put here.
The Colorado Mines veteran has been part of the Orediggers' success over the course of his career and in 2022, that hasn't changed. Julian made his season debut at D2 Pre-Nationals this past weekend and finished 5th overall in a very top-heavy field.
Julian was 34th at last year’s national meet, but he already looks like he’s in better shape than he was a year ago. He just ran 23:49 for 8000 meters and while times don’t mean as much in cross country, that’s still 32 seconds better than his previous personal best wich came at the Chile Pepper XC Festival in 2021.
This Colorado Mines veteran has moved on from being more than an elite middle distance talent in Division Two. If you were to place Julian on any other team in the country besides Colorado Mines, more often than not, he’d be that team’s top scorer.
Don’t let the Orediggers depth take away from the fact that Julian is a legitimate top-25 threat on the grass.
Andrew Amor has not raced since our last rankings update.
Clayton Sayen has not raced since our last rankings update.
This Charleston (WV) athlete makes his way into our rankings for the first time this season after a strong showing at the UAH D2 Festival Year Showcase.
The veteran finished 2nd overall in a photo finish. That result also helped the Golden Eagles finish 3rd as a team and were just 14 points back of the Lee Flames.
Pereira’s run earlier this season at Paul Short wasn’t spectacular, but finishing inside the top-70 of a mostly-Division One race is promising. He reminded us that he’s an elite cross country talent with his performance in Alabama this past weekend as he put seven seconds between him and the next-best D2 athlete in the field.
Pereira was 23rd at last year’s NCAA XC Championships, but we didn’t see him during the indoor and outdoor track seasons, so we had some questions about him entering this fall. So far, he has answered the call and looks to be a fringe top-20 talent as we start to roll into championship season.
Allen most recently raced at Wayne State’s Warrior Challenge.
The junior distance standout took home the overall victory by 12 seconds over Dillan Haviland of Northwood. While the victory is nice, it wasn’t enough for us to keep him in the same spot as last time.
Allen slips four spots to TSR #19, but that's mostly due to other men racing well and not so much because of his own individual performance.
We had seen both of Duigou and Allan earlier this season at the Joe I. Vigil XC Invite and both men were top-10 finishers in that glorified time trial.
We expected Duigou to make an impact for this team after his performances on the track during the spring. And once we learned of Allan, it was just at matter of time before he found himself inside our rankings.
And now, the time has come for both of these athletes to be ranked. Duigou reenters our D2 hierarchy at TSR #18 while Allan finds himself at TSR #17 for his first time inside our top-25.
The duo finished 4th and 5th overall at the Highlander Invitational the other weekend and were Adams State’s second and third scorers. And as a result, we feel like both men have lived up to the high expectations of their respective track times.
We want to see how this duo fares against some of the best men in Division Two when the RMAC XC Championships and South Central Regional XC Championships roll around. We’ll have a better gauge of whether or not they’re top-15 talents after those two meets.
So for now, they sit just inside our top-20.
Ryan Hartman finished 9th at the Platte River Rumble in his second race of the season.
He drops three spots because you could argue that he was the best runner in that field and that he should have won. It’s also worth noting that this was back-to-back weekends of racing for him, meaning that he could have been running on tired legs.
Regardless, we expected Hartman to be a top-10 runner coming into the season. While he hasn’t shown that kind of fitness, he's still a major threat to keep an eye on.
It wasn't perfect, but this was a decent step in the right direction for JP Rutledge.
After a fluke performance at the Chile Pepper XC Festival, the Missouri Southern sophomore bounced back with a solid, but still modest, 5th place finish at the DBU Old Glory Gallup, helping the Lions to a team victory.
In a field with limited top-tier talent, Rutledge should have been a top-five runner and he did just that. Unfortunately, that performance won’t move him up our rankings. He still lost to a few names who he should be better than.
Even so, it’s nice to see that a major scoring component of the Lions' lineup structure is running well-ish again.
Josh Pierantoni has not raced since our last rankings update.
Andrew Hylen earned a modest 24th place finish at the Bradley Pink Classic. In a field of dominated by Division One programs, it’s always hard to gauge just how good a performance like that was.
This GVSU veteran was the third scorer for the Lakers this past weekend and would have been their fourth scorer had Tanner Chada run.
This isn’t a terrible performance, but it’s also not one that makes us turn our heads. There’s plenty of reason to believe that Hylen will be ready for the postseason, he is historically at his best in championship races, so we think we’ll see him flourish there.
But until then, he comes in at TSR #13 in this week's rankings update.
Jan Lukas Becker was 2nd at the UAB Blazer Classic to his teammate Gabe Poulin.
It appears that Poulin, Becker and another Mississippi College teammate, Hunter Kurz, went out in a tempo effort as they went 1-2-3 and had nearly identical times as they crossed the finish line.
Becker is one of the country’s best distance talent and that doesn't change after his most recent meet. His dip in our rankings is solely due to strong performances from others.
Zach Kreft won the Go Fast River Run by 15 seconds over Noah Fisher of Findlay.
This was the third time out for Kreft this season and his second victory. That makes three top-10 finishes this season with the most impressive result coming at Paul Short where he placed 8th in the "Gold" race.
Kreft has made a seamless transition from Notre Dame to Walsh and like Becker, his movement three spots back is due to strong performances from other athletes over the last two weekends.
Dayton Brown has not raced since our last rankings update.
Ryan Riddle moves back three spots this update after his 6th place finish at the DBU Old Glory Gallup.
You could argue that Missouri Southern had the best three runners in that field and only one truly lived up to that expectation. While losing to his teammate JP Rutledge we can live with, losses to unranked runners from East Central and Dallas Baptist hurt his stock if we’re being honest.
There’s still plenty of time for Riddle to bounce back. We're confident that we have yet to see the best version of him this season.
We argued that Cole Nash didn’t quite get the same love as some of his counterparts during our last update and while that was true, we can’t say that any longer.
The Alaska Anchorage superstar made his way south to Seattle for D2 Pre-Nationals and dazzled against some of the best men in the country. Nash finished 4th overall behind Dillon Powell, Loic Scomparin and Duncan Fuehne.
He was eight seconds back of Fuehne, 11 seconds back of Scomparin and 28 seconds behind Powell. Yes, the 28-second gap doesn’t look good, but Powell is arguably the best runner in the country right now.
The eight-second gap and 11-second gap is what makes Nash jump three spots this rankings update. We already considered Scomparin and Fuehne to be two of the best runners in Division Two going into Saturday and they solidified that suspicion this weekend as well.
As a result, we felt like Nash being relatively competitive with those two men makes him one of the the nation’s best harriers.
We were waiting to see Nash compete against some of the best competition on the grass because we felt like he could deliver against a top-tier field. And sure enough, he validated that belief over the weekend.
We mentioned this duo when talking about Nash, but it was just for a brief moment.
We moved these two to sit outside of our top-15 in our first update solely because we had not seen them race. The expectation for them when they did toe the line would be top-10 runners. Sure enough, that expectation was deemed valid after their strong efforts at D2 Pre-Nationals.
Scomparin was the runner-up finisher while Fuehne was three seconds back of him in 3rd place. Those two men were the second and third scorers for a dominant Orediggers team who scored just 19 points. In that effort, they also have made a case as the best supporting cast in all of Division Two.
These two men have legitimate top-five potential at the national meet in December and for neither of them to be the best runner on their team is an insane thing to think about.
To see Scomparin run this well in his first “real” cross country race of the season is sensational. He was affected by the COVID-stricken campaign in 2020 and raced just one time during that season. Fast forward to 2022, and we see him in an Orediggers’ uniform making an impact in a major way.
As for Fuehne, there were always questions about his ability to bounce back after the finish he had to his 2021 cross country season. And while his success on the track helped squash those concerns, we didn’t really have a definitive answer until this weekend.
Fuehne appears to be better now than he was at the end of last year.
Of course, it’s just one race halfway through an extended season.
We will see what these two men are truly made of when they toe the line at the RMAC XC Championships and then again at the South Central Regional XC Championships.
Another race, another victory for the Missouri Southern veteran.
Kimutai won the DBU Old Glory Gallup as he ran away from the runner-up finisher by 26 seconds. His effort helped the Lions to a four-point team victory over an upstart East Central team.
This isn’t anything new from Kimutai as we’ve seen him rise to the occasion before. He was clearly the best runner in this race and he made sure everyone knew it.
Kimutai sticks at TSR #5 for now, but our confidence is continuing to build with him.
Afewerki Zeru hasn’t raced since our last update.
After nearly six weeks since we last saw Beraki on a cross country course, we finally got to see where he is regarding his current fitness.
At the Highlander Invitational, we saw this Adams State star take home the victory by 22 seconds. That is pretty much what we expected for an athlete as talented as Beraki. We would love to move him up a spot, but the lack of competition he saw at the Highlander Invite holds us back from doing so.
Nine of the top-15 athletes in that race were Division Two athletes and five of those nine names were his teammates. We know that Beraki is better than those in that field, but is he better than the two who are ranked ahead of him?
We’ll find out soon.
Tanner Chada has not raced since our last update.
Have yourself a season debut, Mr. Powell!
After a long-anticipated wait, we saw the Orediggers’ low-stick dominate one of the year's most highly-touted Division Two meets. He won by 17 seconds over his teammate and helped lead Colorado Mines to 19 points and a team victory.
Much like his teammate Duncan Fuehne, there was some concern about how Powell would look when he toed the line of a cross country race again following a brutal DNF at last year's national meet. But with this performance, were as confident as ever that he’s the best runner in the country and the current favorite for the national title in December.
Charlie Dannatt (Simon Fraser)
Simon Kelati (Western Colorado)
Luke Julian (Colorado Mines)
Clement Duigou (Adams State)
Cameron Allan (Adams State)
Joao Pereira (Charleston (WV))
Isaiah Rodarte (Adams State)
Noah Fisher (Findlay)
Koby Fraaza (Grand Valley State)
Trent Cochran (Colorado Christian)
Jack Emanuel (Chico State)
Joshua Chepkesir (UNC-Pembroke)
Pierre Galbourdin (Wingate)
Scott Nutter (Wingate)
Issac Prather (Concord)
Paul Kraemer (Embry-Riddle)
Nixon Korir (Azusa Pacific)
Xavier Smith (Fresno Pacific)
Miguel Coca (Adams State)
Matthew Storer (Colorado Christian)
Caleb Futter (Grand Valley State)
Bryan Banuelos (Fresno Pacific)
Joao Pereira (Charleston (WV))
Koby Fraaza (Grand Valley State)
Trent Cochran (Colorado Christian)
Noah Fisher (Findlay)
James Dunne (Adams State)
Myles Bach (Nebraska-Kearney)
Sam Wilhelm (Alabama-Huntsville)
Ward Ries (Edinboro)
Kevin McDermott (Western Washington)
Silas Eckenroad (Lee (Tenn.))
Bastian Mrochen (Wingate)
Thomas Termote (Charleston (WV))
Salvador Capetillo (Azusa Pacific)
Rory Abberton (Chico State)
Hayden Judge (Lee (Tenn.))
Oliver Kiptoo (East Central
Amos Pkiach (East Central)
Noah Metzger (Dallas Baptist)
Jack Emanuel (Chico State)