TSR's 2023 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Rankings (Men): 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.

With Dusty Lopez emerging as a first-year head coach (after being an assistant) and the Ephs experiencing a number of departures, the Williams men have a lot of adjustments to make in the coming months. Even so, it feels like this program has a strong floor amid those changes.

Senior John Lucey will be invaluable as both a scorer and leader for a largely new roster. He was one of the Ephs’ low-sticks last year and emerged as the team’s top scorer at the NCAA XC Championships where he finished 18th. He enters this season in our preseason top-20 individual rankings after a 2022 fall campaign that validated his All-American performance.

However, Lucey will be without fellow front-runners Elias Lindgren, who graduated, and Graham Tuohy Gaydos, who is spending the year studying abroad at Oxford University. Williams’ fifth and sixth runners on last year’s deep team were seniors, leaving the squad a bit thin on proven scoring options.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the cupboard is bare for new head coach Dusty Lopez, but the Williams men may have slightly lower expectations than last year’s group which finished 6th on the national stage.

Nikhil DeNatale finished 50th at last year’s national meet, one of the best results for any freshman, and could certainly develop into an All-American this year. That feels particularly likely after he nearly advanced to the steeplechase finals at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

Nate Lentz figures to play a role in his upcoming senior season after finishing just outside the top-150 at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships. Still, that only accounts for three runners. We trust the pedigree of success and development will continue for this program under Lopez, but we’re not sure if it’ll be among the nation’s elite squads this fall.

Until we have more answers about what the Ephs’ reconstructed varsity and scoring lineups look like, slotting them just outside of our preseason top-10 seems like a fair placement.

Another team that experienced great highs a year ago, John Carroll will be forced to remake much of the lineup that placed 4th at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships.

Foremost among the departures is Division Three legend Alex Phillip who will be plying his trade at the University of North Carolina this year. John Carroll also lost fellow All-American Joe Backus as well as Adam Shah, a valuable scorer. That makes three of the top-five men from last year’s group who are no longer on this roster.

Fortunately for the Blue Streaks, their returners, while not elite low-sticks, are pretty formidable. Ryan Champa has placed in the top-60 at consecutive NCAA XC Championships and profiles as a quality lead scorer at the very least.

His junior classmate, Barrett Scheatzle, is right behind him, having placed in the top-70 on the national stage over the past two years. He’s also been the better runner in a number of regular season meets.

That’s a solid two-man foundation, and it should be further strengthened by Ethan Domitrovich, a steeplechase All-American who has yet to race on the national stage on the grass. However, we should note that he was the team’s third scorer at the 2022 Ohio Athletic Conference XC Championships.

Domitrovich’s credentials indicate that he could emerge as the team’s lead scorer, or at least be a valuable cog in a talented top-three. In fact, we went as far as to list him as an “Honorable Mention” in our preseason top-20 individual rankings.

Dominic Delmoro and Tommy Naiman also appeared in JCU's varsity lineup at the 2022 cross country national meet. While it would help, they likely don’t need to be substantially better for John Carroll to be a top-half team at November’s national meet.

Either way, the Blue Streaks have a relatively solid baseline. They should be the class of the Ohio Athletic Conference and could again finish within the top-10 with internal progression.

By returning their top-five scorers from last year, the Calvin men feel like strong candidates for a quantifiable move up in the D3 distance running hierarchy this fall. That’s saying something considering that this team already placed 16th at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships.

The Knights are led by graduate senior Brandan Knepper who finished painfully close to All-American honors last fall (42nd). He was followed relatively close behind by second-year runner Nick Henz, who placed 64th.

Calvin had relatively strong up-front scoring and good enough depth to finish near the middle of the team standings at the national meet last year. For the most part, that was representative of the lineup structure that we saw from them in their lead up to the national meet.

Now, as we enter the fall of 2023, the Knights should be better in both regards thanks to retention and internal development.

Eric Swinson is a name who could be due for a major leap given that he was the Knights’ seventh runner on the national stage. He ran a slew of personal bests on the oval earlier this year and already looked improved from 2021 to 2022 on the grass.

However, after profiling as one of the Knights’ top runners through the regular season, Swinson faded to 268th at the national meet. That was clearly a fluke and not indicative of his true talent. With more experience, we expect him to be measurably better in 2023.

The difference between Calvin being a "good" team and a "very good" team may prove to be whether juniors Thaine Nederveld and Luke Witvliet, the third and fourth scorers at the 2022 national meet, can join Knepper and Henz to cut down any scoring gaps. Teammate Will Hoffman could be in the scoring mix as well.

In a year where the D3 rankings feel rather wide-open, it’s hardly out of the question that the Knights could become one of the 10 best teams in the country. However, we would like to see that first for a program that has made strong year-over-year improvement and has registered a number of top-25 national meet performances over the past decade, but never top-10.