TSR Collaboration
Nov 25, 202211 min
Written by Kevin Fischer, Hannah Thorn, Brett Haffner & John Cusick
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. You will notice that these rankings may mirror the national meet results, but not precisely. That is intentional. These rankings are intended to be an aggregate. They are not recency lists.
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 last three times that we saw St. Olaf toe the line, they walked away with a 2nd place finish at the Connecticut College Invite, a 2nd place finish at the MIAC XC Championships and a 3rd place finish at the North Regional XC Championships.
The Oles have spent most of their time this fall in the "Just Missed" portion of our rankings. That's why it's safe to say that their 8th place finish at the NCAA XC Championships should soundly place them inside our top-10 to finish the season.
Christine Albrecht had a sensational run on Saturday, finishing 27th and earning All-American honors. The rest of the Oles all finished inside the top-90 while maintaining a 30-second time-spread between their second through fifth scorers.
There's reason to believe that this team could have been even better than 8th place if Alison Bode, Sofia Carlson and Bella Call had performed similarly to Albrecht (relative to expectations). Of course, asking for the Oles to have multiple All-Americans would have placed them in an entirely different conversation.
The entirety of this squad is expected to return in 2023 and they'll have their eyes set on a much better placement than just 8th at the national meet by this time next year.
We had Williams ranked at TSR #9 going into the national meet. And sure enough, Williams finished 9th last Saturday.
Molly FitzGibbons and Ella Ball finished 18th and 26th, respectively, garnering All-American honors for the first time in their careers. A lot of faith had been put into Genna Girard after her strong season of racing, but her falling to 76th overall and coming in as the fourth scorer for this team proved to be too much to overcome while chasing a higher team finish than 9th.
Even so, let's not dismiss Girard's performance as poor or ignore the kind of season that she had. Her overall success this fall was encouraging to see.
Alexandra Bettez finished 62nd and was able to at least keep excessive scoring at a minimum. That performance marked her third-straight strong result after a disappointing race at the Connecticut College Invite.
The depth admittedly fell off a bit after Bettez and Girard as Williams' final three runners finished 146th, 154th and 245th.
Comparing the Ephs' national meet results to their finishes throughout the season suggests that this lineup structure was somewhat expected. The top-four for this team has been fairly consistent this fall, leading Williams to team titles at the NESCAC XC Championships and the Mideast Regional XC Championships.
But when one of those top-four women has an "off" day, it was going to be tough for the Ephs to fully reach their ceiling. Luckily, three of those top-four are supposed to return next year, while six of the seven who toed the line are also expected to be back according to TFRRS.
The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women dominated their regular season races behind the likes of Natalie Bitetti and Meredith Bloss.
That's why we were a bit surprised to see this team finish 10th at the national meet given how well those aforementioned two women had been this fall. And when you add in Annika Kimme, that trio was likely good enough to finish their seasons as All-Americans.
That nearly happened as Bitetti finished 39th, Kimme placed 42nd and Bloss settled for 52nd on the national stage. And if you move them all up into the top-40, then you're looking at a potential 6th place finish instead of 10th which would have been more in line with what we expected.
However, that's a "what if" scenario and we already know the final results. In this case, the Athenas underperformed at the national meet and there's really no other way to say it. They weren't going to be as good as last year, but we weren't expecting a major drop-off.
And for the most part, that was the case for CMS this fall!
They won the "Brown" section of Paul Short, won the SCIAC XC Championships and won the West Regional XC Championships. Everything pointed toward a strong showing from CMS at the national meet, although a 10th place result isn't exactly awful, either.
In their last four outings prior to the national meet, the MIT women turned in team performances of 2nd place, 1st place, 1st place and 1st place. Those results came at the D3 National Preview, the Connecticut College Invite, the NEWMAC XC Championships and the East Regional XC Championships.
That 2nd place finish was behind U. of Chicago, a 47-point margin of defeat. Then, at the Connecticut College Invite, they beat St. Olaf and Williams by 48 and 53 points, respectively. After earning postseason titles at their conference and regional meets, the Engineers were a top-10 team, but we didn't quite know how high up they'd finish last weekend.
We ultimately moved the MIT women up to TSR #7 in our final rankings to match their finish from the NCAA XC Championships.
This team finished 7th on Saturday with one of their top runners, Gillian Roeder, finishing 177th! The fact that she faded that hard and this team still ran so well is legitimately impressive.
With that being said, the Engineers still performed very well overall. Olivia Rosenstein finished 12th overall, making it two All-American honors for her in as many years. Einat Gavish was the second scorer for MIT in 31st place.
Kate Sanderson had a sensational run and was a huge reason why this team didn't fall any further than 7th. The freshman finished 48th and served as the third scorer which was a much-needed result. Anna Haddad was 84th and Christina Crow placed 98th to close-out the scoring.
As a whole, you can look at this MIT team and suggest that they could have been a bit better. But on the flip-side, you can also suggest that they actually over performed at the national meet given the results from some of their key runners.
Regardless of how you feel, the Engineers were a consistent team all season long and were able to perform well under pressure despite an unusual scoring lineup. They deserve to be at TSR #7 to end the season.
The Washington U. women had lost to only two teams all season long heading into last weekend. Those teams were Wartburg and U. of Chicago.
In other words, two of the country's top-three teams were the only programs who were able to get the better of the Bears going into Saturday.
The Bears were 2nd to Wartburg at the Dan Huston Invitational and at the UAA XC Championships. They finished 3rd at the Augustana Interregional Invite and the Midwest Regional XC Championships. All four of those results were strong performances and that led us to believe that the Washington U. were potentially a podium team on the right day.
Of course, we hadn't really seen this team against other non-midwest programs and that likely mattered when they all had to come together and race against each other last weekend.
Emily Konkus and Lindsay Ott did their job on Saturday by finishing inside the top-30 of the NCAA XC Championships. Katie Rector finished 46th and Alexandra Blake finished three spots back in 49th. Through four runners, this team looked very good and incredibly well-balanced.
But despite putting four athletes in the top-50, that wasn't enough to overcome the 98 team points that their fifth scorer earned via a 128th place overall finish.
Despite their strong showings throughout the regular season and familiarity with two of the best teams in the country, the Bears' depth was ultimately tested on the nation's biggest stage. That unexpected backend vulnerability put the Bears in a position where they lost on a tie-breaker to SUNY Geneseo and ultimately finished 6th as a team.
After seeing the results from the national meet, it was a little shocking to see the SUNY Geneseo women miss the podium, finishing in a tie with Carleton at 198 points, but ultimately placing 5th after winning the tie-breaker.
The Knights had what could be considered an "off" day last weekend, but they still walked away with some positives via the finishes of Windsor Ardner in 8th place overall and Kathleen McCarey in 10th place overall, emerging as one of the better duos in the field.
Erin Eivers finishing in 44th place was another encouraging result, serving as a reliable third scoring option. But after her, the 34-second gap to the Knights' fourth and fifth scorers was a little larger than desired.
Rachel Hirschkind admittedly didn't have her best day despite looking like an All-American talent who held top scoring expectations. There were other areas of this lineup that could have been better, but Hirschkind was certainly a key piece in that equation.
Regardless, SUNY Geneseo’s overall seasonal resume was still plenty impressive. They won the Rowan Interregional Border Battle over Carleton, they easily won the SUNYAC XC Championships and they followed that up with another strong victory at the Niagara Regional XC Championships.
Although, truthfully, neither of those conference or regional meets posed any legitimate challenge to the Knights.
Regardless, SUNY Geneseo has proven to be a strong, well-balanced team that simply didn't perform up to their expectations last Saturday. They're still one of the better distance programs in the nation.
If there was one women’s team that had everything go right on Saturday, it had to be the Carleton Knights.
Coming into the national meet as our TSR #7 ranked team, the newly-ranked TSR #5 Knights had a wildly fantastic day, placing 4th overall and finishing only one point behind a very strong Wartburg squad.
We can put it pretty simply when it comes to Carleton's success last weekend.
Every. Single. Runner. Executed.
That clearly showed as the Knights came away with two All-Americans in Clara Mayfield (3rd overall) and Hannah Preisser (15th overall), three fantastic backend scorers as well as the best sixth and seventh runners in the entire field.
It was surprising to see the Knights have the best depth in Division Three at the NCAA XC Championships, but they finally did the thing that we’ve been knocking them for all season: They put together a complete and mostly-flawless lineup.
We wondered if it would be possible to have every runner in their lineup race up to their potential on the same day and the Knights answered that question convincingly at the national meet.
Wartburg had the most All-Americans of all 31 teams that competed at the national meet last weekend. On paper, that's usually always good enough to walk away with a team title.
Unfortunately for the Knights, a national title was not granted to Wartburg.
And neither was the runner-up trophy.
The Knights finished 3rd at the NCAA XC Championships, but when the final points were tallied, they were 31 points behind U. of Chicago and 34 points behind the eventual winners, Johns Hopkins.
Aubrie Fisher (14th), Lexi Brown (16th), Ellie Meyer (22nd) and Shaelyn Hostager (33rd) were all inside the top-35 and finished as All-Americans. Unfortunately for the Knights, Riley Mayer had a sub-par performance compared to her previous results. Mayer finished 132nd and scored a whopping 101 points for Wartburg.
Over the course of the season, we knew that the Knights were faced with limited depth outside of their top-five. At the Augustana Interregional Invite, they finished 2nd as a team, but their sixth and seventh runners finished 33rd and 63rd. At the Midwest Regional XC Championships, they won the regional title, but their final two runners were 30th and 42nd.
All year long, the basis of success for the Knights was predicated on their top-five scorers running to their full abilities on any given day. That didn't happen at the national meet and as a result, their biggest weakness was effectively highlighted.
Luckily for this team, they'll get to return six of their seven athletes for the 2023 season. With some added motivation and another year of training, we could very well be talking about Wartburg being favorites for the 2023 national title...again.
The U. of Chicago women had been running phenomenally all season long.
They won the D3 National Preview over MIT by 47 points. They also beat Wartburg at the Augustana Interregional Invite by three points. They won the UAA XC Championships by 10 points before losing to Wartburg at the Midwest Regional XC Championships by nine points.
After their regional meet, there were real reasons to believe that the Maroons could win the national title. Their biggest hurdle was going to be Wartburg, but they had defeated the Knights once before and they were clearly capable of doing it again.
And then the Maroons ran phenomenally at the national meet.
As expected, they knocked off Wartburg for the second time this season -- by 31 points to be exact! However, what no one saw coming was the performance from Johns Hopkins (more on the Blue Jays later).
The Maroons finished 2nd at the NCAA XC Championships and put five athletes inside the top-60. That was better than the winner of Johns Hopkins whose top-five were all inside the top-75.
Anna Kenig-Ziesler finished 11th place overall while Lucy Groothuis finished 17th place overall, giving the Maroons two athletes inside the top-20. Maddie Kelly was the third All-American, finishing in 36th place, while Katarina Brimac placed 45th and Sophie Tedesco settled in 60th, rounding out the scoring five for the Maroons.
This team ran as well as they were supposed to in order to win a national title. Of course, coming up three points short after arguably their best performance of the season is not quite the development that we were expecting.
At the very least, the Maroons are the second-best team in Division Three for the 2022 season. In almost any other year, we'd be talking about this group as the best team in the country.
If you haven't heard by now, the Blue Jays upset the favorites, Wartburg and U. of Chicago, at the national meet. And going into the weekend, had you told us that this was possible, then we might have called you crazy.
But everything that needed to happen in order for Johns Hopkins to win gold...actually happened.
Alex Ross (5th) and Sara Stephenson (9th) both finished inside the top-10, bettering the likes of the Maroons' duo, Kenig-Ziesler and Groothuis. Ross and Stephenson were also better than the Wartburg duo of Fisher (14th) and Brown (16th).
Meanwhile, Sydney Fridel finished 30th and was the third All-American who helped the Blue Jays keep pace with the rest of the title contenders in the national meet field.
All that was left was to keep their fourth and fifth scorers within range to mitigate the scoring from teams who might have had more depth than them. And that's exactly what Katharine Priau (53rd) and Paloma Hancock (73rd) did.
Those two backend performances are what sealed the deal for the Blue Jays. You can certainly trace those three points back to the top of the results with Ross and Stephenson, but we can't emphasize how important it was for those final two scorers to be inside the top-75.
Add in the lack of a strong fifth scorer for Wartburg, and a perfect storm was brewing for a major upset in Michigan.
The Blue Jays went through a handful of scoring lineups during the regular season and postseason, making our expectations for this team at the national meet somewhat muted.
We knew that Ross and Stephenson could be high-octane scorers and that Fridel was a strong third scorer for this team when she races. However, what we didn't know was whether or not this team's final four athletes were up to the challenge.
But it now seems safe to say that they very much were.
Johns Hopkins proved that they had enough depth to fill out a lineup behind their top scorers all season long. The Blue Jays also proved that their depth was capable of stepping up when necessary.
And those two things combined to make Johns Hopkins our top team for the 2022 cross country season.
St. Olaf Oles
UW-La Crosse Eagles
Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens
Amherst Mammoths
Bates Bobcats
UW-La Crosse Eagles
Hope Dutch
John Carroll Blue Streaks
Loras Duhawks
UW-Eau Claire Blugolds
George Fox Bruins
Lynchburg Hornets