TSR Collaboration
Aug 1, 20227 min
Written by Kevin Fischer & Brett Haffner, additional commentary and edits by Garrett Zatlin
After a breakthrough 2021 outdoor track season -- where he dropped his 5k personal best from 15:02 to 14:24 and earned All-American honors -- Max Sparks picked up where he left off with some of the best racing of his career last fall.
The Lynchburg ace finished a surprisingly strong 4th place in the loaded "Silver" race at the Louisville XC Classic. He then earned another huge 4th place finish yet again at Rowan two weeks later.
Both of those meets held some of the best runners in Division Three and in those races, we realized that Sparks was one of them.
The rising Lynchburg star also rolled through the postseason, earning key victories at the ODAC XC Championship as well as the South Regional XC Championship. On paper, he looked like one of the most elite D3 talents that the country had to offer last fall -- he was just that good.
Unfortunately, Sparks would go on to place 63rd at the NCAA XC Championships, a slightly disappointing result given his proven talent.
Sparks then managed to run 3:52 for 1500 meters and 14:31 for 5000 meters in the spring, but may have fallen off of some people's radars after not qualifying for the national meet on the track.
Regardless, we've seen what Sparks can do on the grass and we are very high on him going into this cross country season. If he is at (or above) the fitness level that he displayed last October, then this Lynchburg Hornet will cause some serious problems for even the best distance runners in the nation.
Don't be misled by his national meet result, Sparks' consistent success throughout last season has given us reason to believe that he's capable of more...much more.
It's hard to dismiss someone like Nick Andrews from our rankings. This SUNY Geneseo star is much better than some people realize. He was fairly consistent throughout last fall and he had a monster year on the track.
And depending on how you value certain results, he may be better than TSR #14.
Last fall was a big one for Andrews who never finished worse than 4th place in any race leading up to the national meet -- and these races were by no means easy.
Andrews placed 4th on his home course at the SUNY Geneseo Mike Woods Invite, losing only to Ezra Ruggles, Matyas Csiki-Fejer and Jack Begley, but defeating Drew Donahue, Cal Yackin and a few other key names in the process.
However, maybe his best result came at the Rowan Inter-Regional Border Battle where Andrews earned silver, losing only to Frank Csorba. However, Ezra Ruggles, Max Sparks and the entire Haverford team all fell to Andrews, giving the SUNY Geneseo Knight another excellent regular season result.
3rd and 4th place finishes at his conference and regional meets were fairly respectable. Then, at the NCAA XC Championships, Andrews settled for a 39th place All-American finish. It was a solid result, but it was very clear that Andrews was capable of doing more.
So he did.
On the track, Andrews was flat-out fantastic. In what could be argued as his true breakout campaign, the SUNY Geneseo ace ran 4:11 in the mile, 8:08 for 3000 meters, 14:11 for 5000 meters and 9:11 in the steeplechase.
At the NCAA Indoor Championships, Andrews was a 6th place All-American in the 3k and one spot off from that same honor in the 5k with a 9th place finish. At the outdoor national meet, Andrews continued to be one of the best postseason runners in the country, finishing 7th in the 5k and earning his third All-American honor of the year.
Sure, Andrews didn't have his best race at the NCAA XC Championships last fall. In fact, we might even argue that his conference and regional meet finishes could have been slightly better.
But if our biggest criticism of Andrews is that this All-American finish could have been a higher All-American finish, then one has to think that Andrews has been otherwise flawless.
His regular season results on the grass were excellent, he proved he could take down top names, he threw down top-level marks in the longer distances and he continuously delivered All-American results throughout the 2021-22 academic calendar.
We may not know what Andrews could do at the cross country national meet when he's truly at his best, but we do know that leaving him out of our top-15 would be a risky move.
Frank Csorba broke onto the national scene suddenly and emphatically during the 2021 outdoor track season. That year, the Lynchburg ace secured a regular season 10k mark of 29:37 which held a pace that was faster than Csobra's pre-COVID 3k personal best.
Oh, and he would later finish 6th in the 10k at the national meet, earning All-American honors.
Csorba's momentum was rolling in the first-half of the 2021 cross country season. In fact, he even won the Rowan Inter-Regional Border Battle! But then Csorba was struck with bad luck, missing the South Regional XC Championships due to an injury and then faltering at the national meet.
The Lynchburg star would miss the indoor track season and while he was able to compete during the spring, his season didn't go quite how he envisioned it. Csorba did manage to run 14:31 (5k), but it was not enough to get close to a national qualification.
It's easy to forget about what Csorba has done in the past, especially when you look at how much time has passed. Still, when he's fully healthy, we know what he is capable of.
With a 10k personal best 29:37, Csorba has one of the best 10k marks in Division Three. His aforementioned victory at Rowan last fall against a field loaded with several future All-Americans is also no joke.
Csorba absolutely has the ability to hang tough with almost anybody in D3 and we've seen him do it before. Noow he just needs to put it together at the national meet.
Last fall, Derek Fearon’s first season of collegiate cross country was a baptism by fire.
The Pomona-Pitzer rookie immediately found himself under the pressure of being a key member for a team that was defending a national team title -- and every single meet he ran in was against a highly competitive field, some of which were largely DI or DII runners.
As a result of the high-level of competition, Fearon’s best finish at any meet throughout the season was 10th place, a finish he achieved at both the Cougar Challenge in September and the West Regional XC Championships later in the season.
But that elite level of competition ultimately led Fearon to his best performance of the season which came at the national meet. There, he was the Sagehens’ second scorer, crossing the line with a fantastic 12th place finish.
Fearon had a limited number of races on the track this spring, posting two 3:58 marks in the 1500 meters as well as 14:41 and 14:40 times in the 5000 meters. While Fearon wasn’t at the level you’d expect him to be after his cross country national meet result, you do have to give him credit for the consistency.
There are some question marks with Fearon given that he hasn’t really had another performance to back up his 12th place national meet finish. That could just be an indication that he performs his best when the lights are brightest, but we haven’t seen enough of Fearon yet to know for sure.
Either way, we do know that he is capable of being towards the front of some very good fields. Because after all, if he turned out to be a national meet star as a true freshmen, then what can he do with a year of experience under his belt?
Coming into last fall, Christian Patzka had already earned All-American honors in the steeplechase as a true freshman in the spring of 2021. We weren’t sure exactly how that success would translate to the grass, but the Warhawk star would put any uncertainty to rest last fall.
For the most part, Patzka's regular season in cross country was good, even really good, but it wasn't amazing, either. But then the postseason rolled around and we saw the young distance standout peak beautifully for his championship meets.
Patzka would go on to place 4th at WIAC XC Championships, 2nd at the North Regional XC Championships and then 23rd at the NCAA XC Championships, earning All-American honors in the process.
Those last few results of his were very strong, but collectively, they weren't quite enough to put Patzka at our TSR #11 ranking.
That was, of course, until we reviewed his track resume.
Patzka's performances on the track this past winter and spring were even more impressive than what he did on the grass. During the winter months, he ran 8:19 for 3000 meters and 14:17 for 5000 meters, earning a 4th place finish in the 5k at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
The rising Warhawk star would later drop that 5k personal best down to 14:15 during the outdoor track season and also put together a speedy 3:49 mark for 1500 meters.
However, it was his overwhelming steeplechase success that garnered the most attention. After running 8:56 at the WIAC Outdoor Championships, Patzka ran a lifetime best of 8:50 at the outdoor national meet, battling Christopher Collet all the way to the line and falling short of the win by just three tenths of a second.
Patzka, alongside Gunner Schlender, will be part of one of the better 1-2 punches in all of D3 this fall and he will be carrying a ton of momentum off of an incredible outdoor track season. He is in a fantastic position to make a significant improvement upon his 23rd place from the NCAA XC Championships from last year and make a promising jump into the highest tier of competition.