Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
Aug 27, 202310 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.
In 2019, Coach Chris Miltenberg shockingly left Stanford, an established west coast powerhouse, to overtake the Director role at the University of North Carolina. There, he was tasked with turning the Tar Heels into a distance running powerhouse rather than a middle-of-the-pack ACC team.
And so far, the evolution of this program has been tremendous.
With elite recruiting and refinement of elite raw talent, both the North Carolina men and women look like they could realistically earn spots on the podium this fall...depending on who you ask. No, they won't be favored to do so, but the last few years of development have been building up to this point.
In 2023, the UNC women will be tasked with capitalizing on their army of aerobic-centric distance standouts in hopes that they can catch more established teams who have brought in superstar transfers.
It won't be easy...but it's certainly very possible.
UNC's 2022 cross country first began at the Coaching Tree Invitational, an early-season meet in Indiana which hosted a handful of quietly great teams. Among them were Georgetown, a strong distance program that would prove to be a handful later in the postseason.
However, the Tar Heel women were simply too strong in their opening rust-buster. Brynn Brown took home the overall win while Kelsey Harrington (4th) and Sasha Neglia (7th) also snagged top-10 results. Taryn Parks (12th) and Fatima Alanis (13th) would later close out the scoring.
In the end, that top-five would be enough to give North Carolina the victory in fairly comfortable fashion over Georgetown. And yet, at the same time, it was far from a perfect race. The team's lineup gaps in a relatively small field weren't idea. Plus, if Georgetown had fielded a key fifth scorer, then the Tar Heels likely would have lost.
Even so, it was hard to put much stock into a September-time race. Instead, the UNC women would shift their focus to the Paul Short Invite where they would, yet again, toe the line against Georgetown (as well as other top teams).
Once again, Brown led the team with a 6th place low-stick result. It wasn't her best race -- we thought she could have placed among the top-three -- but it was still a good result. Meanwhile, Harrington produced a strong 8th place result to maintain solid firepower for the UNC women.
Parks (12th) had a strong performance, Natalie Tyner (17th) was a nice development at the team's fourth lineup spot and Fatima Alanis (20th) kept the team scoring in check. In the end, that was enough to take a Georgetown (which was still struggling with their backend scoring) by four points.
With two key early-season wins under their belt, the Tar Heels had to feel good about where they were at going into the rest of the season. And sure enough, that momentum was evident at the Nuttycombe Invite.
On the biggest regular season stage of the year, Brown (19th) was fantastic yet again while Harrington (27th) continued to make very underrated improvements, slowly establishing herself as a true low-stick. Meanwhile, Parks (50th) was also building confidence, producing a top finish that was much better than we were expecting from her.
Alanis (89th) and Neglia (95th) would admittedly finish a bit farther back from Parks than we would have preferred, but they still ran fairly well. Those two women kept UNC from sustaining any excessive scoring. And by having five women in the top-100, the Tar Heels left Madison, Wisconsin with an excellent 6th place team finish.
After a successful business trip, the North Carolina women would find themselves having a slightly more modest performance at the ACC XC Championships -- although there they did have a pretty good excuse.
The Tar Heels didn't have Brynn Brown for this race. That left Harrington to lead the team with an 11th place finish. Alanis and Neglia would place 20th and 21st, respectively, while Tyner was 27th and Parks had an "off" day in 30th place.
In the end, UNC settled for 4th place in the team standings, losing to NC State, Notre Dame and Virginia. Sure, they weren't going to beat the Wolfpack or the Fighting Irish even if they did have Brown, but the UVA women were within striking distance.
Even so, it was hard to be too excited about the Tar Heels' performance. As a whole, the team lacked firepower (yes, we know Brown didn't race) and no one seemingly ran to their full potential. Luckily for them, that would change in the postseason.
After somewhat comfortably navigating through the Southeast Regional XC Championships, the North Carolina women toed the line in Stillwater, Oklahoma for their season finale. There, they validated all of the promising results that they had produced in the months prior.
Harrington surprised many of us with a stunning 17th place low-stick finish. That was a welcomed development, especially with Brynn Brown dropping to 42nd place, a minor "off" day for someone who we felt was a comfortable All-American candidate.
Even so, the Tar Heels were thriving through two runners and things only got better when Sasha Neglia (62nd) and Natalie Tyner (66th) toed the line. The scoring stability was there, but now the team needed to close out their top-five. That job would be given to true freshman Eva Klingbeil (108th) who had a much better race than anyone was expecting.
In the end, North Carolina posted an incredible 5th place team finish on the national stage. It was easily their best performance of the season and even a slight surprise for those of us at The Stride Report as no one predicted them to finish higher than 7th.
This is usually the part of the article where we talk about the "bad news" or, more specifically, all of the athletes who are no longer on this team. However, when it comes to this Chapel Hill-based squad, there are only one or two names who need to be mentioned.
Yes, the Tar Heels are losing Carlee Hansen from last year's squad. However, she was more of a middle distance runner on the track and didn't even make UNC's top-seven at the national meet last fall.
Instead, the only legitimate varsity loss that this team has sustained is Natalie Tyner, the fourth scorer for North Carolina at Paul Short, the ACC XC Championships and the national meet.
That's a much bigger loss than some people may realize. This now-departed veteran offered great stability and had the best race of her career on the national stage. With her no longer being listed on their roster, the Tar Heels will need to find someone to act as her replacement later this fall (while being just as potent).
Of course, by knowing that this team only loses one scorer, I'm sure you are all going to ask, "But then why is North Carolina only ranked at TSR #7? They were 5th at the national meet last year and return six of their top-seven!"
And yes, you're right. There is a very, very good argument for this squad to be ranked higher. In fact, we probably wouldn't disagree with anyone who wanted to list the Tar Heel women as high as TSR #5 going into this fall.
But the fact of the matter is that the 2022 NCAA XC Championships was clearly North Carolina's best race of last fall. They weren't necessarily amazing at the ACC XC Championships (even if we consider Brown's absence) and they would have lost to Georgetown earlier in the year had the Hoyas been firing on all cylinders.
However, more importantly, a handful of other teams around the NCAA made MASSIVE upgrades this offseason. Programs such as Colorado, Florida and Northern Arizona are expected to sport lineups this fall that look much more different (and much stronger) than what they had last fall.
Plus, with other top squads expected to return a handful of key names, you can see why the North Carolina were pushed back to TSR #7 -- it's not necessarily based on anything negative that happened to them.
Yet again, Brynn Brown and Kelsey Harrington are expected to be the focal low-sticks of this team in the fall of 2023. Brown was certainly more consistent than Harrington last fall, but as we saw on the national stage, Harrington's ceiling was seemingly greater.
Brown's 2022 season was highlighted with a 19th place finish at Nuttycombe and a 42nd place result on the national stage. Harrington, meanwhile, placed 27th at Nuttycombe and 17th on the national stage. They both placed in the top-10 at Paul Short.
Together, this is a lethal duo that was fairly consistent throughout last fall. If the "worst" race of Brown's 2022 cross country season was her placing two spots out from All-American honors, then that's a good problem to have. And while it could be challenging for Harrington to replicate her national meet finish from last fall, she never truly had a poor race.
Not only that, but these two women could both make improvements on certain stages later this year and collectively chop off a few more points from their team score. It won't make a massive difference, but their upside would be sightly more impactful than any improvements made by the low-sticks on other podium-contending squads.
However, if this program is going to contend for a top-four finish on the national stage, then they'll need more than just two low-sticks to get to that level. Yes, this roster is loaded with high-upside talent, but trying to find a third (or maybe even fourth) lead scorer is by no means an easy task.
Sasha Neglia is a really interesting name to analyze...but also a tricky runner to figure out.
As a freshman during the pandemic-altered 2020 cross country season, this UNC runner was terrific. She was clearly the best freshman in the nation on the grass (for those who competed in the fall, not necessarily the winter) and she ended up placing 46th at the 2021 NCAA Winter XC Championships.
Since then, Neglia has been very solid, but she hasn't quite reached that same level of fitness since then, at least not on the cross country course. She was a bit quieter in the fall of 2021, but began to rally in the fall of 2022, something that she validated by placing 62nd on the national stage.
This is going to be a big year for Neglia. After running 9:56 in the steeplechase this past spring, the talent and potential is there for her to be an All-American this fall. She's no longer a wide-eyed youngster and she has proven to be much more consistent as of late.
If Neglia is the low-stick that we think she can be, then this team will improve their chances of being on the podium. Sure, they'll still have a shot at reaching that point even if she replicates last year's efforts, but her scoring potency is going to be wildly important for UNC this fall.
And then there's Taryn Parks, the mile-centric star who joined the North Carolina women during the same year as Neglia.
During the early portion of last fall, Parks was fantastic. She placed 12th at the Paul Short Invite and later earned a massive 50th place finish at Nuttycombe. However, her postseason races left us wanting so much more.
It's difficult to gauge expectations for Parks going into this fall. If she can consistently run like she did at Nuttycombe, then the loss of Natalie Tyner should effectively be moot for UNC.
That, however, has yet to be seen.
Even so, Parks is supremely talented and it feels like we're just waiting for this rising veteran to have her first true breakout race on the grass. We don't know when that will happen, but it feels she's due for a big season in the near future.
Meanwhile, Fatima Alanis will continue to act as a reliable backend scorer for this squad in 2023. She was a very reliable piece to have last fall after seeing her place 20th at Paul Short, 89th at Nuttycombe, 20th at the ACC XC Championships and 130th on the national stage.
Alanis is a lot more valuable to this team than the results from last year may give her credit for. She never had a truly poor race (some were better than others) and she was a major reason why her team's score never got out of hand.
We're still waiting to see if this former D2 star can take that next step into a more potent scoring role, but at the very least, she's going to be the reason why this team never produces a poor result in 2023.
However, the biggest x-factor on this team going into the fall months could end up being Eva Klingbeil, the former rookie who ultimately allowed UNC to crack the top-five at the national meet last fall.
After a fine, but unexciting, performance at the ACC XC Championships (where she placed 36th overall), Klingbeil was the 18th place finisher at the Southeast Regional XC Championships. She later placed 108th on the national stage.
This past spring, the now-rising sophomore ran 16:02 for 5000 meters on the track. Everything that we've seen from this Tar Heel runner suggests that she could be extremely dangerous this fall if she continues to progress at this rate.
Is it possible that Klingbeil is this team's third low-stick in the fall of 2023? The more we ponder that scenario, the more realistic it becomes.
Out of everyone else, Ciara O'Shea is probably the main name to watch this fall. She's an incoming rookie who was a stud in high school, running 9:59 for 3200 meters, 16:23 for 5000 meters (on the track) and placing 5th at the 2022 Champs Sports XC National Championships.
At her best, this is someone who can absolutely be a scorer for this team in the fall of 2022. She was very consistent over the last year and was seemingly in her comfort zone on the grass.
Admittedly, some superstar rookies have been a bit "hit or miss" for UNC in recent years, but if O'Shea translates her talent in her debut collegiate season, then yes, the Tar Heels will be ranked better than TSR #7 by November.
The rest of this team is stacked with younger runners who were former high school stars as well as a handful of solid veterans.
Page Lester is a graduate transfer from Princeton who finished 11th at the 2019 Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships.
Sydney Masciarelli is a former high school standout who won the 2018 Foot Locker XC National Championships, but has yet to translate her success to the NCAA (for now).
Ava Dobson is an experienced runner who ran 16:10 for 5000 meters this past spring and could crack this team's top-seven.
Sarah Trainor has had moments of promise in the past (running 10:09 in the steeplechase) and could be a developmental name to monitor later this fall.
Simply put, depth is not an issue for this team.
On paper, this UNC cross country roster feels like they are void of flaws. They have multiple low-sticks, experienced middle-lineup scorers and they should have decent-enough depth. And with a ton of high-upside youngsters, it's hard to see this team having a poor race over the next few months.
Yes, the last few spots of the Tar Heels' top-seven leaves us with questions, but the bigger uncertainty with this team is their ceiling for this fall. How much better can certain women be in 2023 compared to 2022? Who is going to have a breakout season and by how much?
There's no denying that this is going to be one of the best cross country teams in the NCAA this fall, but if everyone delivers on their potential, then the UNC women may be one of the last teams who we would want to deal with come October and November.