TSR Collaboration
Mar 16, 202315 min
Written by Hannah Thorn & Kevin Fischer
Additional edits and commentary by John Cusick & Garrett Zatlin
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Listed eligibility takes redshirts and Covid-related extensions into consideration.
TFRRS is used as a general guide when determining eligibility.
Was not ranked in our last update.
First number indicates how much the athlete has moved in our rankings.
The second number indicates where the athlete was ranked in our last update.
Caroline McMartin ran a great DMR leg on Friday night, splitting 4:55 on the anchor leg and leading the Dutch women to a fantastic 5th place finish. Yes, it's true, her effort over 3000 meters (finishing 13th in a time of 9:54) wasn't ideal, but it was four seconds shy of her 3k PR and a slight improvement on her placement from last year.
And in the grand scheme of things, her DMR leg was probably one of the impactful relay contributions of the national meet.
McMartin has taken her fitness to a new level this year, bringing her personal bests from 5:09 to 4:57 in the mile and 10:12 to 9:50 over 3000 meters. Her progress, even if her 3k showing this past weekend wasn't great, has earned her the last spot in our indoor track rankings.
After an 800 meter race where she just missed out on the finals, Windsor Ardner avenged her disappointing prelim showing with a really nice 4:52 (1600) DMR leg, mixing it up with Emily Konkus and Maddie Kelly who were both fresh.
Simply put, Ardner inherited a very difficult task and held her own very well.
Although she will be disappointed not to have made the 800 meter final, this was never her primary event. Without DMR duties, it looks as though she has the potential to record a high finish in the 1500 meters this spring.
Anna Kenig-Ziesler had a career day in the 5000 meters at the indoor national meet this past weekend, finishing 3rd overall with an outstanding 11-second personal best of 16:40.
The U. of Chicago standout ramped up her pace in the last 1600 meters, closing in a split 5:11, a time that is faster than what her mile PR was going into this season. And in the end, that ultimately was less than a second shy of a 2nd place finish.
Her journey from being a solid distance runner to the very top-tier of D3 started during the cross country season and it is reaching its pinnacle now. She will have more momentum than almost anybody in the country going into the outdoor track season and that could prove to be a problem for her competitors.
On a weekend where multiple people had trouble doubling back in the 3000 meters, Ella Ball did a masterful job of executing two great races.
After finishing 6th in the 5000 meters, she came back with a PR of 9:36 in the 3000 meters to finish 8th, completing a difficult All-American double.
Sure, neither finish was that high among the All-American honors, but that level of strength/reliability is something that we haven’t seen from Ball early-on her in Williams career. Of course, if she continues to race like this, then there is potential for us to be talking about Ball contending for a national title in the coming years.
This was a great weekend for her and moving into the outdoor track season, we anticipate her being a mainstay in these rankings.
As the lead group of Clara Mayfield, Annika Urban and Ana Tucker broke away early-on in the mile finals, Lexi Brown stayed within herself, running a patient race. She remained composed and closed incredibly well, ultimately finishing in a very solid 4th place.
Her mark of 4:53 (mile) was also a PR in the event, shaving a second off of her previous best of 4:54 set the day before in the prelims.
That personal best in the mile marks the fifth time that she has set a personal best this year, detailing just how big of a breakout season this was for the Wartburg star. And to put her success into perspective, Brown’s mile personal best is now just four seconds slower than her 1500 meter personal best!
Brown didn’t run how she would have liked in the 3000 meters, but it’s always tough to come back from an all-out effort like that in just a couple of hours and match the same intensity.
All in all, this was a highly successful indoor national meet for Brown and the perfect cap to her impressive winter campaign. Truthfully, there may be an argument for her to rise a spot or two in our list.
Ellie Rising ran with a ton of guts at the indoor national meet, matching Emma Kelley’s hot pace in both the preliminary round and the finals of the 800 meters. On opening day, that approach earned her a lifetime best and a "big Q” to advance to the finals.
Yes, it's true, she faded pretty hard towards the end of that 800 meter final as she registered a 36-second last lap...but she still held on to finish in 3rd place overall! Not many women can race like that, but it's safe to say that her approach paid off.
Sure, she may have disconnected from Kelley, but she still outperformed her seed by an impressive margin, going to show that sometimes, the best race plan is to put yourself in the mix and see what happens.
There’s no reason to believe that Rising’s success will stop during the outdoor track season, either. She had a limited schedule in her first-ever indoor track season and that makes us wonder how she will perform on the outdoor oval later this spring.
After splitting a 4:51 anchor leg in the DMR to move Wartburg from 7th place to 4th place, Aubrie Fisher came back the next day and ran a 3000 meter PR to finish 6th overall.
Even though she is now a seven-time All-American, that 3k performance marked the first time that Fisher has been an All-American in an individual track event besides the steeplechase.
This Wartburg ace has had high expectations since her freshman year and she has taken yet another step in cementing a legacy that matches those expectations. She is showing that she can be nationally competitive on a consistent basis without steeple barriers involved -- and that’s a major step in the right direction for the rest of her career.
We do have to wonder what Fisher can do to reach that next tier on the indoor circuit, eventually fighting for top-three finishes on this kind of stage. But until then, she’ll chase All-American honor number eight (and maybe NCAA gold) this spring.
Morgan Lee’s championship weekend did not go exactly according to plan, but she was able to make some adjustments that really paid off for the RPI veteran.
In the DMR, her team was already out of the mix by the time she got the baton for the anchor leg. We’re assuming that she was instructed to cruise through the rest of her leg as RPI placed 12th overall in a time of 12:14.
That was 16-seconds slower than 11th place and 30 seconds off of their seed time.
Luckily, that decision to not over-exert herself in the DMR did end up helping Lee when she contested the 3k the next day. In that race, she outperformed the fact that she was the 9th seed in the field by finishing 7th overall in a new PR of 9:34! That was also an eight-spot improvement from last year when she finished 15th.
As disappointing as that DMR finish was for her team, adjusting expectations in the middle of that race seemed to be the correct call. Lee was going to have to be as fresh as possible for an aggressively-paced 3k effort which, in retrospect, was a racing style that suited her skillset.
Hopefully, Lee can bring some of the lessons that she learned from the indoor track onto the outdoor oval as she has yet to qualify for a national meet during the spring months. If she does indeed qualify, then she’ll be a legitimate threat to finish inside the top-eight of whichever event she chooses.
And if you asked us, Lee is one of the last women who we would want to race in a 10k...
After Fiona Smith ran away from the field relatively early, she left the rest of the field to battle for 2nd place. That battle ultimately came down to Genna Girard and Hannah Preisser, the former taking the lead just before the halfway point. Girard was the one who pushed the pace to catch Smith and was able to get somewhat close before running out real estate.
Coming out of that race with a silver medal and a new 5k PR of 16:40 a monumental development for the Williams junior. This should give her some major confidence going into her third outdoor campaign after missing most of last spring.
But in reality, when you look at this field as a whole, it was plenty realistic for someone of Girard's caliber to come away with a runner-up result. For perspective, two of our writers had her placing 3rd overall.
We will probably see this still-rising Ephs standout move up in distance to 10,000 meters later this spring. She was the 6th place finisher in that event in 2021 and she is proving to have fitness that is the best that its ever been.
This was a solid weekend for Gillian Roeder, especially when you consider that this was her first indoor national meet. We also have to admit that she placed 16th in the 1500 meters at the 2022 NCAA Outdoor Championships and later placed 177th at the NCAA XC Championships...so our expectations for Roeder were tempered a bit.
The sophomore distance talent took on the mile leg in the DMR for MIT, but was only able to manage a 10th place finish. That’s not too bad considering they came in with the 8th seed, but finishing outside of the top-eight is always a disappointing end to a race at the national meet.
However, the mile is where she really shined.
After a preliminary heat where Roeder placed 2nd in due to a great finishing kick, it was on to the final for her. There, she lost touch with the leaders and had to play catch up with the chase pack. As a result, she finished in 5th in a time of 4:53.35 (mile).
Saturday was the second-straight time that Roeder ran 4:54 (1600/mile) or faster on back-to-back days, really showcasing her strength and consistency. And for someone who is still relatively young, it's nice to have that kind of reliable low-stick over the long-term.
Maddie Hannan didn’t have the best weekend individually, but we're sure she isn’t too worried about any of that as she helped her team take home the national title.
Individually, Hannan ran a blazing-fast 4:52.84 mile mark in the preliminaries which was a PR by three seconds. But truthfully, a time like that was needed as you had to run sub-4:55 to make the mile finals!
Hannan definitely paid the price for that PR (a little bit) as the next day, she couldn’t find that same turnover in the last quarter mile and settled for a 4:55.79 mark. That’s still a very good showing and it earned her a 7th place finish.
However, where the multiple races really affected her was the 3k. She finished in 17th place overall, a disappointing end to her national meet, in 10:00. That is well off of her 9:50 PR, but she was with the chase pack with a mile left, before running out of gas over the final few laps.
Again, we don’t think Hannan should be too disappointed because she is walking away from this season with multiple PRs, an All-American finish and a team trophy. And frankly, her season as a whole was so good that it would have had to take a catastrophic national meet showing for her to drop much further than this.
We didn’t want to judge Hope Murphy too harshly in these rankings because of one tough weekend.
The Baldwin Wallace ace came into the weekend seeded as the second-best seed in the 800 meters after a terrific season where she caught fire over the last month.
In the half-mile preliminaries, Murphy placed 2nd in the first heat after running a very controlled race. It was a close finish and we got to see her fantastic kick on her way to running 2:12.28. Tactically, it was an encouraging opener.
Unfortunately, that race may have taken more out of her than we thought. In the finals, when Emma Kelley started running away from the field, Murphy had no response. And when Aoife Dunne broke away to chase Kelley down, Murphy still had no response.
She ended up finishing in 6th place with a time of 2:14.48.
No, that wasn't a bad finish, but it's just not what we expected from her.
It will be interesting to see which race Murphy gravitates towards during the outdoor track season. Will she stick with the 800 meters? Or move back up to the 1500 meters? No matter what she picks, expect her to be at the national meet contending for a top-eight spot.
Emily Konkus had one of the better doubles this past weekend at the national meet.
She started off racing in Washington U.’s DMR on the 1200 meter leg where she split 3:31 and handed the baton off to her teammates in the lead. This helped propel her squad to the win after Aoife Dunne closed the deal and crossed the line with gold and a time of 11:35.
Konkus doubled back the following day in the 3k where she was seeded 5th. And sure enough, she lived up to expectations, finishing in 5th place while running 9:32 (which was a new PR by four seconds).
In that race, Konkus was half a second away from finishing in 3rd place, giving you an idea of what tier she truly belongs in (the elite tier). We're sure she will be looking to sharpen her kick this spring after that narrow miss of bronze, but Konkus was solid all season long and it was hard to dislike anything she brought to the table.
Aoife Dunne had a wonderful weekend at the national meet.
She was the anchor leg for Washington U.’s DMR. She got the baton immediately after Windsor Ardner and played it smart by just sitting on Ardner’s shoulder for the first 1100 meters. Dunne was then able to open up a slight gap and that was just enough to hold off Ardner and Maddie Kelley for the Bears to secure the NCAA title.
It was just a fast split, it was a perfectly-executed run.
To make matters even more impressive, she ran an 800 meter preliminary round just a few hours earlier! And that wasn’t a "walk in the park" effort. Dunne ran 2:11.49 (800) which was a monster race for her, but also gave you greater appreciation for her anchor leg.
Dunne took the momentum from her preliminary round and her team’s DMR win into the 800 meter finals. While Emma Kelley ran away from the field, Dunne played it cool for the first 500 meters. Then, she unleashed a monster kick and started to reel Kelley in. She came up slightly short of catching Kelley, but placed 2nd in 2:08.65.
Again, that’s 2:08.65!
That is a two-second PR and the first time under 2:10 (800) for Dunne. Not only was she versatile, consistent and clutch, but she peaked unbelievably well.
This likely wasn't the weekend that Clara Mayfield had envisioned.
She was a heavy title favorite in the mile coming in and performed pretty well in the preliminaries. She ran 4:52 to qualify for the finals with the fastest time and it looked as if she would come away with a victory the next day.
When it came to the mile final, Mayfield dictated the pace and went out pretty hard with her first 200 meters being clocked at 35 seconds. It was still a hot pace 800 meters in with Mayfield, Urban and Tucker splitting around 2:22 at the halfway point.
But when Annika Urban made her move, Mayfield just couldn’t respond. That could be from the night before or from the fast start, but either way, she finished 3rd in a time of 4:51 (mile).
Mayfield had to rebound to race the 3k just a few hours later where she landed in "no man's land" and was never truly competitive. She ended up finishing in 10th with a time of 9:44.
We have faith that Mayfield will bounce back. She is simply too talented to not be viewed as one of the national title favorites for this spring. But for now, she will have to drop four spots in our final set of rankings to TSR #6.
Ana Tucker was one of the only women to attempt three events (which means four total races) this past weekend -- that's an ambitious task regardless of who you are.
On Friday, she had the mile preliminary where she ran 4:52 and qualified for the finals with the third-fastest time. This was a PR, but if you’ve been reading up until this point, then you know just how fast this year’s mile final was...
Then, Tucker had to bounce back and run another mile (well, 1600 meters), but this time as the anchor leg for Hope’s DMR squad. They finished just outside of All-American honors in 9th place and a time of 11:52.
On Saturday, the Hope College veteran contested the mile final where we saw some incredible times from the entire field. When Annika Urban made her move, Tucker moved with her, but she didn't have quite enough strength to hold on.
Tucker ultimately finished in 2nd place with a time of 4:47.03 (mile). That was better than the personal best of 4:52 (mile) that she set the previous day by five seconds...but she wasn’t done yet. She still had the 3000 meters to contest.
While Fiona Smith ran away from the 3k field, Tucker opted to lead the chase pack, keeping the pace honest. She finished 4th overall in 9:32 and secured another personal best.
It’s crazy to think that Tucker is usually a 5k/10k runner, so it will be so interesting to see what she chooses to race this spring. Her newfound combination of speed and strength makes her one of the scariest competitors in the country and someone who her opponents would rather not see on the starting line.
The main point to bring up about Maddie Kelly’s races this weekend is her performance in that DMR. She brought U. of Chicago all the way back into this race on her anchor leg. It was truly astounding. The Maroons ended up finishing in 2nd place, running 11:35.88, just seven-tenths of a second off of the gold medalists, Washington U.
If that was her only race of the season, she still might have one of our votes for best performance of the weekend.
But then things got even better.
In the 3k, Kelly waited in the chase pack as Fiona Smith made her move. And with 200 meters to go, Kelly definitively made her move as she shot out of the pack. This may be a hot take, but if the race had another 400 meters, we could have seen Kelly catching Smith. She finished in 2nd place with a time of 9:30 (3k).
There was no denying that Kelly was a true, national-caliber stud coming into this past weekend. And yet, at the same time, some of us at TSR had questions about how closely she could contend at the very top of these loaded distance fields.
And as it turns, she can compete VERY closely to those women.
Ok, we may have lied earlier...Annika Urban’s race in the mile finals could also be our favorite race of the weekend.
The Emory star got through her preliminaries with relative ease and saved her theatrics for the finals on Saturday. And once there, she waited until the 900 meter mark to make her move. But once she did, Urban just bounded away from the field. She opened up a four-second lead within 400 meters and never looked back.
Urban won this race in a new championship record of 4:43.17, a seven-second improvement upon her previous personal best!
If Urban only raced the mile, she would still be ranked this high. But she also had a great 3k effort, running 9:32 for 3rd place. There isn’t much more to dissect from that race as Urban was expected to be a top-three finisher in the event.
Outside of Fiona Smith, we are not sure if anyone else had a better double this weekend than Urban. Her stock is the highest it's ever been and it could continue to rise with a strong outdoor track season.
Emma Kelley’s status as the 800 meter title favorite was never truly in doubt this weekend.
She ran 2:08.78 in the half-mile prelims to set herself up as the top seed by three seconds. Then, in the finals, she opened the race with a 62-second first 400 meter split. She was just simply the best athlete in the field and she proved that with a dominant victory.
Kelley ran 2:06.62 over 800 meters to win the national title and outclass the rest of her competitors by two seconds. No distance runner was more dominant in a singular event than she was this winter.
The Washington U. star also helped her team place 3rd in the 4x400 meter relay, splitting 54.1 second on her leg. With preliminaries for both the 800 meters and the 4x400 meter relay, Kelley had four races under her belt this weekend...and we would say that she crushed all of them.
Fiona Smith was a unanimous choice for TSR #1 after her performances at the national meet.
In the 5k, she opened a commanding lead early-on and never looked back, winning by seven seconds over the field with a time of 16:33. This was also the fastest that she covered the 5000 meter distance this season, indicating that she peaked at the perfect time.
In the 3k, she used same tactics that she had in the 5k. She opened up a lead pretty quickly and then held on as no one had the ability to close the gap. Smith looked incredibly confident throughout the entirety of the race and we’re not sure that she was ever bothered by Maddie Kelly’s hard close. Smith was able to earn the win in 9:25 (3k).
A three-second PR, a championship record in the 3000 meters and multiple national titles over the course of the past weekend makes it an easy call to place Smith at our top spot to end this winter campaign.
Anna Kenig-Ziesler (U. of Chicago)
Caroline McMartin (Central College)
Brooke Wellhausen (UW-Stevens Point)
Christine Albrecht (St. Olaf)
Brooke Wellhausen (UW-Stevens Point)
Sofia Carlson (St. Olaf)
Amelia Lehman (UW-Oshkosh)
Ella Behrens (Washington U.)
Marcie Hogan (SUNY Geneseo)
Christine Albrecht (St. Olaf)
Katarima Birmac (U. of Chicago)
Molly Fitzgibbons (Williams)
Hannah Neilon (Tufts)
Frances Schaeffler (U. of Chicago)