First Thoughts: D2 Weekend Recap

Written by John Cusick and Garrett Zatlin

Gulf South Conference Championships

This was a meet that we were looking forward to all season long given the expectations that we had for both Alabama-Huntsville and Lee (Tenn.) coming into this season. After taking home the conference title in 2019, the Chargers were aiming to do it once again in 2020.

Despite the return of Lee's Christian Noble this fall, the Alabama-Huntsville men were able to upend the Flames for the second-straight season for the GSC victory. Led by Harold Lacroix and Jay Day, the team scored 33 points to Lee’s 42 points.

Gabe Henneberger and Caleb Boys were 7th and 8th overall while Alex Herbst sealed the victory with his 11th place finish. Hennenberger, just a freshman, had what was arguably the best race of his young career over the weekend as he helped UAH come out on top once more. Yet again, the Chargers' minimal lineup gaps and respectable depth (even past five runners) gave them the edge.

However, in what may have been their best team performance of the season, the Flames had just as many men in the top-10 of this race with Noble winning the individual title by 12 seconds. Teammates Caleb Eagleson (4th), Adan Rodriguez (9th) and Silas Eckenroad (10th) were the other three runners inside the top-10. However, their fifth scorer faltered to 17th place overall, ultimately giving the Chargers their nine-point cushion.

Overall, it was an interesting season for both of these teams. Alabama-Huntsville showed that they were the real deal on numerous occasions, taking down Lee in three separate meets and even pulling a minor upset over the Augusta men.

As for the Flames, they certainly didn't meet expectations this year, but they weren't necessarily bad by any means. However, we were a bit surprised that UAH beat them somewhat convincingly.

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On the women's side, the Flames took care of things as they scored 32 points en route to a 21-point victory on Saturday. Celine Ritter won the race by 34 seconds, giving the Lee women their fifth straight GSC team title.

Toni Moore (4th), Danielle Horter (6th) and Olivia McClain (9th) all finished inside the top-10 along with Ritter. Hannah Spooneybarger (12th) was the final scorer for the Flames on the day, putting all five scorers in front of Mississippi College’s fourth runner.

While we could certainly try to analyze this result 20 different ways, the fact of the matter is that Lee was just the better overall team. Mississippi College was respectable, but no one was touching Ritter and her teammates.

Speaking of Mississippi College, Jazmin Hernandez ended up being the top scorer for her program by finishing 5th overall. Her teammates were a few spots away, packing together to finish 10-11-13-14. Although the Choctaws were over 20 points off from Lee, we still have to recognize that they put together a decent race.

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As the 3rd place team on both the men's and women's sides, Montevallo had two individual 2nd place finishes. Joseph Leventry outlasted the UAH duo of LaCroix and Day for that runner-up spot while Justine Glass was the runner-up in the women’s race. Thanks to their strong front-running, Montevallo was able to secure bronze in both races.

The Montevallo men edged Mississippi College by just seven points. Meanwhile, the women tied UAH at 89 points, but ended up winning the tie-breaker.

Lone Star Conference Championships

There was not a whole lot of action at the Lone Star Conference Championships, but when you’ve won your conference title for just a touch under a decade, there is still some significance in taking home another win. Sure enough, that was the case for the West Texas A&M men who took home their eighth-straight LSC title.

Junior college transfer Innocent Murwanashyaka led the team with a 2nd place overall finish while teammates Butare Rugenwara and Arnaud Taki were right behind him in 3rd and 4th place, respectively. Harry Louradour was 9th with Briggs Wittlake rounding out the scoring in 13th.

In the end, the Buffaloes scored 31 points, earning an easy 41-point margin of victory over Oklahoma Christian. All of that was done with the reigning South Central regional champion from last year (Ezekiel Kipchirchir) not looking like himself. The 2019 standout finished 22nd this past weekend in a field that he dominated last season.

It’ll be interesting to see if Kipchirchir returns to his 2019 form. If he does, watch out for this West Texas team as they could end up having some significant firepower.

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The women’s side of things was dominated by Dallas Baptist. We hadn’t seen them race against a ton of competition this season, but that clearly didn’t matter as they scored 25 points and were clear of West Texas A&M by 60 points.

All five DBU scorers finished inside the top-nine, with Madison Brown and Marrisa Insinna finishing 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Leslie Filorio was 5th with Emily Mackel right behind her in 6th. Jenna Thorman placed 9th, securing a dominant win for the Patriots.

This team is young and races tight as a pack. In fact, their top five time spread from this past weekend was just 30 seconds. That's some impressive stuff from a group that is scattered with seniors, juniors and sophomores.

On the individual side of things, JUCO transfer Florance Uwajeneza (West Texas A&M) was the overall champion and won the race by 1:28 (yes, you read that right, a minute and 28 seconds) over DBU’s Madison Brown. That is wildly impressive result and it should instantly vault her into being one of the top distance talents in the country this season.

Who knows? Maybe Uwajeneza will be able to take home gold at the D2 National Invite 10 days from now if West Texas A&M attends.

Newman Team Invite

Despite the MIAA not officially hosting a conference championship this year, we still saw a handful of MIAA teams make their season debut this past weekend in Wichita, Kansas. Many of these teams raced in an effort to eventually qualify for the D2 National Invite set to take place on November 14th in Lubbock.

In the men's race, we saw a very surprising result as Nebraska-Kearney took down top-ranked NW Missouri (30 to 43) in what we would consider to be a significant upset.

The Lopers of UNK put together a pleasantly strong performance, placing three men inside the top-five, four men inside the top-eight and five men inside the top-12. With Ben Arens leading the way via an individual runner-up result, the men of Nebraska-Kearney ended up having the best firepower in the field.

As for the Bearcats of NW Missouri, they finished a surprising 2nd place overall. Jhordan Ccope was the expected individual winner, but the scoring pieces behind him had a few more gaps than UNK did. Reece Smith, a transfer from Iowa, had a respectable performance by placing 7th overall, but the Bearcats' final three scorers dropped to 10th, 12th and 13th (in the team scoring).

Coming into this season, we ranked the Bearcats at TSR #4 in our preseason rankings. However, underwhelming performances from Mike Lagat, Jacob Nkamasisai and Fedrick Kipyego during Friday's race led to the 2nd place team result.

Despite the loss, it's important that we keep things in perspective. Augostine Lisoreng was a very legitimate All-American candidate for the Bearcats last year and was a top-ranked name coming into this 2020 season. Unfortunately, we didn't see his name in the results.

If Lisoreng had run, then the team score would have been far closer.

Not only that, but we don't truly know just how good this Nebraska-Kearney team is (at least not yet). We've seen plenty of teams embrace breakout seasons this fall and the Lopers could certainly be another one of those programs.

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Speaking of upsets, how about the women of NW Missouri? After placing 11th at last year's MIAA XC Championships, the Bearcats shocked a lot of us at The Stride Report by securing the overall win this past weekend, beating Central Missouri by two points.

Now, admittedly, this race didn't have quite the same importance or urgency that a usual conference meet does. In fact, only seven teams toed the line for Saturday's race. Even so, Central Missouri is a respectable squad, and it's important to remember that they only lost the MIAA title by six points last fall.

Things may be different this year, but we still have to commend the NW Missouri women on a nice win this past weekend.

Sophomore Delanie Dykes led the Bearcats to the overall victory with her individual win while Caroline Cunningham (6th) and Amber Owens (8th) offered reliable scoring support. They had a bit of a drop off in their final two scorers (who finished 14th and 21st in the team scoring), but the Central Missouri women were also working with the same challenges.

Cynthia Togom and Maria Elmore were an excellent top two for Central Missouri, placing 2nd and 3rd overall. Teammates Lilian Busienei (10th) and Kenzie Bergman (11th) also held their own. However, their final scorer finished 26th in the team scoring and as a result, the NW Missouri women were able to get the win by just two points.

Regardless of the final results and the margin of victory, both teams ran very well and they each displayed great firepower.