Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
Aug 25, 20239 min
NOTE: Earlier this summer, The Stride Report reached out to nearly every team that was considered for a possible ranking this summer. While we did receive numerous responses and great clarity, we did not get a 100% response rate. On rare occasions, we are referencing TFFRS in order to talk about returners and athletes who are out of eligibility.
It's a new era at the University of Oregon.
Jerry Schumacher has taken over the Ducks as the team's newest Director of Track & Field and Cross Country. His first year with the program is now complete.
The 2022-23 academic calendar was a simple adjustment period of sorts. The Oregon men were still trying to figure out what their squad was going to look like and they had not yet been molded or developed into the vision of Schumacher and his staff.
But we are now entering year two under the regime of the Nike Bowerman Track Club coach and plenty has changed.
The Ducks have since added one of the best young distance transfers in the NCAA. They have scored one of the greatest collections of high school distance recruits ever. They have also brought in Parker Valby's now-former distance coach, Chris Solinsky, to their staff.
However, maybe most importantly, nearly all of their top distance talents return with an unreal amount of upside.
And the scariest part?
This isn't even their final form.
It's hard to say when exactly Oregon's first major meet of the 2022 cross country season was. You could argue that it was at the Bill Dellinger Invite where multiple men from their varsity lineup toed the line, but that field gave the Ducks zero issues.
Instead, the Nuttycombe Invitational should be viewed as the first legitimate meet of Oregon's fall campaign. And for a squad that was still incredibly young and held only one true low-stick, it was hard to know what the expectations should have been for them.
But surprisingly, the Ducks ran way better than we expected.
Veteran star Aaron Bienenfeld led the team with a key 24th place finish. That firepower would prove to be highly valuable for a squad that was deep, but limited on lead scoring. However, the bigger development was seeing Abdinasir Hussein (75th), Cameron Stein (87th), Giuliano Scasso (89th) and Quincy Norman (94th) all cross the line in the top-100!
We'll fully admit, we were blown away. The Ducks had an extremely young and inexperienced squad. Some of those men had not shown signs that they were going to be top-100 finishers at a meet as prestigious as the Nuttycombe Invitational.
And with a stunning 12th place team finish, the Oregon men entered the postseason leaving us at The Stride Report in disarray as we tried to revamp our team rankings.
The PAC-12 XC Championships, however, is where that inexperience and limited firepower came back to bite them.
Bienenfeld (2nd) was elite once more. However, with no one else finishing in the top-15, there just wasn't enough scoring value in Oregon's lineup to contend with the top programs in their conference. In fact, they only had one other runner, Hussein (17th) finish in the top-20 while the rest of their scorers settled for top-30 finishes.
The PAC-12 XC Championships was a bit of a wake up call for the Oregon men. Yes, they had a low-stick star and decent depth, but they couldn't let their opponents crowd the gap(s) between those two groups.
After navigating through the West Regional XC Championships (where the backend of their lineup made things a bit tighter in the team standings than they may have liked), the Ducks ventured to Stillwater, Oklahoma for the NCAA XC Championships.
On that stage, Bienenfeld (14th) was outstanding as expected. However, James Gormley was the only other Oregon runner to finish in the top-100, earning a solid 94th place finish. And with Hussein, Norman and Slenning going 131-146-162, respectively, in the overall results, the Ducks had to settle for a 16th place finish on the national stage.
And yet, given the expectations of this program going into last fall, that was a fantastic result that deserved to be celebrated. It was also roughly on par with what this team showed us at the Nuttycombe Invitational.
When it comes to Oregon, there really isn't a ton of bad news...well, except for one thing.
The Ducks will no longer have Aaron Bienenfeld leading their team in 2023 and that's a massive scoring loss. He was the main reason why this team remained nationally competitive last fall and why Oregon thrived despite the inexperience of their backend runners.
If they didn't have him at the national meet, then this team would have finished 26th overall in the final standings rather than 16th.
For most teams that had the lineup structure that Oregon had last year, losing Aaron Bienenfeld would have been a loss that certainly wouldn't have allowed this group to crack the top-10 in our preseason rankings. There's also a good chance that they wouldn't even be ranked as high as where they ended last year.
But this year's Oregon group is distinctly different. Yes, they lose Bienenfeld, but they also added Izaiah Steury, a Notre Dame transfer who looks like one of the next big collegiate cross country stars. Everyone else on this (very young) roster returns and the recruits joining the Ducks are historically elite.
We may not know exactly what their lineup is going to look like in 2023, but for the time being, it may not matter. This team is talented enough and deep enough where we feel confident that they'll have one of the top cross country teams in the NCAA by November.
We're expecting Izaiah Steury to be the main low-stick on this team in 2023. Yes, that requires some favorable projections, but this is someone who was arguably the best true freshman in the country throughout the entirety of last fall.
The Indiana native finished 14th at Joe Piane, 28th at Nuttycombe, 9th at the ACC XC Championships and 63rd at the NCAA XC Championships. The former rookie consistently improved as the season went on, was surprisingly reliable and showed signs of being a true low-stick.
Currently, we have Steury ranked at TSR #36 going into these fall months. Despite not racing during the winter or spring, we still believe that he has some of the best potential in the NCAA and that he'll be an All-American for this team.
Steury doesn't need to replicate all of Bienenfeld's lost scoring potency. As long as this rising sophomore is still a nationally competitive low-stick, then that will be perfectly fine. He just needs to be able to soften the departure of the former Oregon veteran.
As for the second spot in this lineup, that could go to a variety of different men.
In our eyes, a relatively safe bet would be Abdinasir Hussein. The rising junior was far from amazing last fall, but he was very solid, highly valuable and fairly reliable. Placing 75th at Nuttycombe, 17th at the PAC-12 XC Championships and 131st at the NCAA XC Championships all reflect varying levels of potential for this fall.
We're not sure what his ceiling is going to be as we enter a new academic year, but another step in his fitness (and slightly stronger consistency) would benefit this team quite a bit. And even if Hussein doesn't improve, then he'll still be a great third or fourth scoring option.
However, the best options for the second or third spots in this lineup may actually be two incoming freshmen, Connor Burns and Simeon Birnbaum.
Both of those rising freshmen were true all-time stars at the prep level. Burns ran 3:58 (mile), 8:31 (3200) and 13:37 (5k), the latter mark briefly being the high school national record before Lex Young ran 13:35 a few weeks later.
Burns didn't have the best showing at the NXN Championships, but his talent is unreal. He was listed in our "Just Missed" section for our preseason individual rankings and it wouldn't be unrealistic if he was a top-60 runner in the country this fall.
As for Birnbaum, you could argue that there was no high school distance runner better than him on the track this past spring.
By the time he ended his prep career, this South Dakota native had run times of 1:47 (800), 3:37 (1500), 3:57 (mile), 8:01 (3k), 8:31 (3200) and 14:39 (5k XC). He also placed 4th at the 2022 Champs Sports XC National Championships and was 6th at the 2022 NXN Championships.
It's plenty possible that Birnbaum could be just as good as Burns or maybe even Steury by October or November. Most of his recent track success seemed to be largely speed-related, but he may have some of the best raw talent of any former high school star.
However, at the same time, it's plenty possible that these two men are redshirted and don't even toe the line for the rest of this year. That seems unlikely given how valuable this season of racing experience could be for the fall of 2024, but it is something to consider.
If just two or three of those men deliver on the lethal scoring potential that we believe they hold, then this team is already going to be significantly better than they were last fall. And with so many talented options flooding the rest of this roster, the Oregon men aren't going to be limited on depth.
James Gormley is also returning this year -- and he may end up being the biggest x-factor on this team by the postseason.
Admittedly, he struggled a good bit throughout last fall, but his 94th place finish at the NCAA XC Championships was highly encouraging. That result likely gave him some valuable momentum to eventually run times of 3:37 (1500) and 7:49 (3k) on the track earlier this summer.
This British distance talent is clearly rising at a rapid pace. He has now given us multiple results which suggest that he can be a high-impact name. There's no denying that Gormley currently holds better fitness now than he did at this time last year.
Of course, there's no perfect way of knowing how his recent 1500 meter and 3000 meter efforts will translate to the grass this fall.
We also can't ignore the return of key names like Cameron Stein, Giuliano Scasso and Quincy Norman. All of those men were top-100 names at the Nuttycombe Invitational. And for a handful of teams listed in our top-15, a top-100 finisher at Nuttycombe would have been their second or third scorer last fall.
Of course, all of those runners are going to have to be more consistent this fall compared to last year. After Nuttycombe, each of those men left us wanting a good bit more in the postseason (with the slight exception of Norman).
The rest of this roster is loaded with elder returners, rising sophomores and a handful of the best freshmen in the NCAA from the Class of 2023.
Rheinhardt Harrison was redshirted last fall while Josh Edwards used 2022 as a developmental year. It's very possible that both of these rising sophomores will make jumps in their fitness, although it's unclear by how much and how that fitness will translate to the cross country course.
Luke Affolder, Vincent Mestler and Caleb Brown are longer distance talents who have yet to truly shine as impactful talents for Oregon. However, each of those men have a couple years of collegiate experience under their belts and one of them could be due for an improved fall campaign.
We also can't forget about incoming Aussie rookie, Archie Noakes.
The overseas distance star ran phenomenal times as a prep talent, posting marks of 4:01 (mile), 7:53 (3k), 8:57 (steeple) and 13:52 (5k). And if you're not sure about how those efforts could translate to the grass, then just know that Noakes also finished 17th at the U20 World XC Championships earlier this year.
Simply put, he's the real deal.
Even the other true freshmen (not named Burns, Birnbaum or Noakes) hold strong potential for this fall. Be sure to keep an eye on Sergio Del Barro, Tayson Echohawk, Daniel Watcke and Will Heslam who, on pretty much any other team, would be the marquee recruits garnering a ton more attention.
I mean, heck, Sergio Del Barro (from Spain) has run 8:39 in the steeplechase and we're only barely mentioning him now!
The depth on this team is overwhelming. It feels like the Oregon Ducks could realistically field two different varsity lineups and each of those groups could qualify for the cross country national meet.
Of course, the youth on this team is a double-edged sword. Inexperience and inconsistency are key factors to consider for a lot of men in this lineup. And while we would fully expect one, and maybe two, of these newcomers to be a true scoring star, there's no guarantee that they'll deliver on that potential.
And yet, at the same time, it's the thrilling upside of this roster that makes them so much fun. The ceiling for this team is limitless.
It's extremely rare for The Stride Report to put so much stock and emphasis into a team that is going to be headlined by so many younger runners. In most cases, that youth can be a liability.
But for whatever reason, we're going to ignore that. We just like way too many of the names who we see on this roster to be down on them going into 2023. Sure, we still have a ton of questions about which men are going to fit into which scoring spots, but on a team this deep...does that even matter?
I suppose we're about to find out.