TSR's 2023 Preseason D2 XC Top 10 Rankings (Women): Just Missed & Honorable Mentions

Written by Gavin Struve, additional commentary and edits via Garrett Zatlin

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.

The women of Lee (Tenn.) admittedly didn’t have their best cross country campaign last fall. However, there’s reason to believe that a bounce back is in store, perhaps even one significant enough to land them in the top-10 of our rankings at the end of the season.

After finishing 8th at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships, the Flames seemingly had their upward trajectory halted. They slipped to 3rd at the UAH D2 Festival Year Showcase and later to 19th place at last year’s national meet. The Flames didn't necessarily have a bad season, but it was also clear that they working to rebound in 2023.

While the Flames did boast a solid lead scorer at the national meet (Liza Kellerman who finished in 56th place) and decent depth, neither area was strong enough to boost them further up the final standings.

Fortunately for the Flames, this year sets up perfectly for a return to prominence with roster retention and an infusion of talent giving them both firepower and depth.

Kellerman is back as a lead scorer after showcasing praiseworthy consistency. She ran several personal bests during the winter and spring months and may be an All-American talent this fall.

The craziest part, however, is that she may not even be this team’s top runner.

McKenna Cavanaugh is joining Lee (Tenn.) as a graduate transfer by way of Southern Indiana where she ran marks of 4:49 (mile), 16:39 (5k) and 10:39 (steeple) at the Division One level. She was already an individual qualifier for the Division Two national meet several years ago, so we are bullish about what she’s capable of now. That, in turn, led to her earning herself a spot at TSR #25 in our preseason individual rankings.

Beyond those two leading women, the Flames return the entirety of their varsity scoring lineup from last fall. That includes names like Megan Adams, Lily Hare, Danielle Horter and Katie Krueger.

Adams in particular could make a jump after serving as the team’s second scorer at the national meet as a freshman. The Flames also added Zoe Brickley, a graduate transfer from Wingate, who ran 4:57 (mile) and 17:16 (5k) at the North Carolina-based school and has a good chance at impacting this lineup -- to what degree, we aren't sure yet.

It’s hard to think of much better recipes for success than bringing back your top-five runners and adding two impactful transfers. The Lee women may not have podium upside, but they have a strong baseline for success. And truthfully, if someone wanted to rank them inside the top-10 this summer, we probably wouldn't argue.

That being said, the Lee women will still need a few more runners to progress and break into the top-100 at the national meet to justify top-10 status.

The ThunderWolves are one of the teams that fell directly on the cut line for our preseason top-10, even more so than some of their peers in our “Just Missed” section.

On one hand, they placed 6th at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships and are returning their All-American low-stick as well as their third scorer from that meet.

On the other hand, they lost three women from their scoring five -- and CSU-Pueblo’s defined lineup structure was one of their greatest strengths last fall. Plus, their sixth runner finished over 100 spots behind their final scorer at the 2022 national meet.

This year, the ThunderWolves have one of the more high-upside leading scorers of any D2 team in junior Helen Braybrook. Last fall, she placed 23rd at the cross country national meet as an underclassman and went on to record runner-up finishes over 800 meters at both the indoor and outdoor national meets.

However, Braybrook had a relatively volatile cross country season before her All-American finish, placing 29th at the RMAC XC Championships in what didn’t look like much of an outlier result at the time. That’s why we have her in our “Just Missed” section instead of our preseason top-25 in our individual rankings.

Luckily, return of Margot Thomas-Gatel (58th at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships) will take some of the stress off of Braybrook’s shoulders as the latter tries to replicate her All-American result and become a consistent low stick.

But the loss of All-American standout Yasmine Hernandez, CSU-Pueblo’s top scorer for the majority of last season, will be difficult to overcome for a team that peaked perfectly for the national meet.

There’s talent elsewhere on this roster, and the ThunderWolves have a strong history, but the turnover they suffered is severe enough for us to move them outside of our preseason top-10.

If you’re looking to put your faith in a team with elite firepower, then this isn’t necessarily it. The Warriors lost their closest thing to a low-stick last year with the graduation of Ashley Defrain (she was 51st at the 2022 cross country national meet).

However, the Warriors finished in the top-10 of the national meet last year on the strength of their depth, and they return it in abundance this season. In fact, they have so much depth that we may be making an error by omitting them from our preseason top-10 list.

After Defrain, Wayne State’s next four runners all placed among the top-110 individuals at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships. And despite the initial assumption that they may lose a couple more of those women to graduation (with two others being listed as seniors a year ago), all four will be back on the course this fall.

Thailyia Christensen and Charlene Yarema are staying on — the former as a redshirt senior and the latter as a graduate senior — to reprise their roles as reliable backend scorers. In front of (or near) them, we expect to see Briana Vojinov and Reagan Justice, two underclassmen from last year who placed in the top-75 at the national meet last fall.

Justice appeared capable of being a lead scorer at times last year. Vojinov, meanwhile, has plenty of upside after serving as the second Warrior to cross the line at the last fall’s national meet when she was just a freshman.

Regardless of whether these women take a jump in fitness, Wayne State should be a top-15 to 20 team relatively comfortably based on the strength of their scoring group. While it’s not out of the cards for any runner to have an “off" day, each of this squad’s top-four scorers likely have baseline expectations of finishing in the top-100 on the biggest stage.

And if the Warriors can find a reliable fifth scorer, perhaps from the two other women on their team who landed in the top-200 at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships, then they should have even greater upside.

Slotting the Bulldogs here admittedly requires some projection.

The Wingate women were 23rd at last fall’s NCAA XC Championships and lost one of their varsity scorers, Zoe Brickley. In fact, she's now on a different team (Lee) that occupies a similar range of our team rankings.

We don’t anticipate that the Wingate women crack the top-10 of our list this fall (although it’s certainly not impossible), but they likely won’t be too far off from that range.

Lead scorer Mollie Scott returns to lead the way and will be chasing All-American honors after finishing 46th last season. She’s listed in the “Honorable Mentions” section of our preseason top-25 individual rankings. The Bulldogs don’t have anyone else in this group who resembles a low-stick, but they should be buoyed by their continuity.

Doriane Langlois, Brooklyn Pierce and Tatjana Mense all join Scott as fellow seniors who should stabilize the middle portion of this lineup. Juniors Grace Burrell and Amber Scott also return after finishing ahead of all of those women at the UAH DII Festival Year Showcase a year ago.

The Bulldogs appear to field a strong rotation of six capable scorers. And while they may not have a defined lineup structure highlighted by elite firepower, they also have less uncertainties than a number of their contemporaries.

Wingate’s women’s group won’t be able to rival their podium men’s team, but they should still at least be able to cruise through the South Atlantic Conference and piece together a lineup that places them in the top-half of teams at the cross country national meet.

The Alaska Fairbanks women are one of the hardest groups to place among any division entering this season. Kendall Kramer, Naomi Bailey and Rosie Fordham are each All-American contenders to varying degrees, and they comprise one of the best top-threes in the nation.

There are teams in this range of our rankings who would kill for a troika of that caliber. From there, the Nanooks only need to find two more respectable scorers to piece together a pretty daunting scoring lineup.

At the 2022 NCAA XC Championships, Kramer placed in the top-10, Fordham was just outside of All-American honors and Bailey had an “off" day, but still placed in the top-100.

If UAF had fourth and fifth scorers who placed in the top-150, then they would have been a top-20 team with ease. However, the Nanooks didn’t even send a full team to the national meet. That's because they didn’t even qualify despite putting three women among the top-four spots at the West Regional XC Championships for the second-consecutive year.

They also sat in in the “Just Missed” section of our preseason rankings a year ago.

Continuity and development could lead to another runner or two bridging the gap towards the team’s low-sticks. And when you project the ‘Nooks’ lineup with competitive backend scorers, it’s a dangerous group -- one that will strike fear in the hearts of opponents not just in the GNAC, but nationally, as well.

Entering this fall, there are a number of question marks surrounding this program, which does not have a track and field team and fields just an eight-person roster. But the Nanooks are quite literally one or two scorers away from being an elite team.

Because of their upside and firepower, but also the uncertainty of whether more support will emerge, placing UAF in the “Just Missed” section of our preseason rankings feels fair.