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First Thoughts: North Central & Johns Hopkins Men Impress, U. Chicago Women Display Strong Start
- John Cusick
- Sep 20, 2022
- 9 min read
Edits and additional commentary by Garrett Zatlin
You guys didn't think we forgot about Division Three, did you?
The season is still young with plenty of teams continuing to shake off their September rust. Even so, there are plenty of results for us to sift through from this past weekend.
Without further ado, let's get started!
North Central & Johns Hopkins Men Upset John Carroll
When we put out our preseason team rankings and listed the John Carroll men at TSR #3, it came with a preface that the departure of Jamie Dailey would hinder the Blue Streaks. However, what we didn't anticipate was how much his departure would be felt in a larger field.
Well, not until this past weekend, that is.
At the MSU Spartan Invite, the John Carroll men finished 7th overall despite Alex Phillip's 2nd place finish as an individual. After he crossed the line, the Blue Streaks appeared to be with less depth than we expected them to have.
Barrett Scheatzle (29th) and Ethan Domitrovich (33rd) did their best to bolster the middle-lineup scoring for the Ohio-based men. And while those were solid results for those sophomore distance talents, they were also not quite good enough to keep this team afloat in such a crowded field.
Ryan Champa (56th) and Dominic Delmoro (73rd) were the team's final two scorers, giving the Blue Streaks a team total of 168 points. That was just two points behind Johns Hopkins and five points behind North Central.
The time-spread between Phillip and Delmoro? 1:48.
That gap will need to be drastically reduced if John Carroll wants to compete for a podium spot come November. And while it's true that Alex Phillip does skew the time-spread, having well over a minute and a half separating your top-five scorers still isn't ideal.
Luckily, this race can be considered a learning experience for such a young team. While the MSU Spartan Invitational is a competitive meet, it's also an early-season race and we can't make too big of a judgment off of one performance in the middle of September.
It's also worth noting that although we expected to see Cormac Peppard-Kramer this season, he was not in uniform for the Blue Streaks this past weekend. He's not listed on the team's roster this fall, and his absent in this race continues to leave us unsure about his status for the next few months of competition,
Luckily, there is still plenty of time for this John Carroll men's team to make adjustments before the championship season begins. However, this past weekend will serve as an eye-opener in terms of what those adjustments need to be.
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But let's put John Carroll aside for the moment. Lets instead talk about some of the Division Three stalwarts that ended up beating the Blue Streaks this past weekend.
The North Central men had a very strong race this past Friday with their top-five scorers all finishing inside the top-55 at the MSU Spartan Invite.
Max Svienty led the Cardinals with his pleasantly surprising 13th place finish, a promising low-stick scoring boost. However, the depth and support from the Cardinals' backend scorers truly shined on Friday. After Svienty crossed the line, the Cardinals went 34-36-46-54, enough to score 163 points and upset the Blue Streaks.
The Cardinals are an experienced team with all five scorers (Svienty, Julian Higueros, Connor Riss, James McGlashon and Andrew Guimond) being upperclassmen. That experience and veteran steadiness makes this team a much greater threat than we realized as we get deeper into the season.
And here's the catch: They have room to be even better in future races.
Braden Nicholson, a projected top-five scorer, didn't have his best race on Friday. Nicholson finished as the sixth runner in the Cardinals' lineup, falling back to 60th overall. If he returns to his top form that we saw during the winter of 2020, then he could be another low-stick alongside Svienty.
The Cardinals would end up as the 5th place team in the final standings. They were just one point back of Kent State, meaning that if Nicholson were to finish inside the top-five of their lineup, we'd be talking about the Cardinals as the 4th place team at one of the more competitive early-season meets.
Johns Hopkins also had a strong day as a team, finishing 6th overall with 168 points.
Matthew Kleiman (18th) and Emmanuel Leblond (19th) finished inside the top-20 and were separated by just three seconds. Together, they offered a very nice upper-tier scoring presence that was beautifully complemented by their supporting cast.
Teammates Gavin McElhennon (38th), Rowan Cassidy (51st) and Daniel Chen (64th) were the final three scorers for Johns Hopkins, closing out their top-five in a similar way to North Central.
While neither Kleiman nor Leblond are considered elite low-sticks, their finishes helped propel this team to an impressive 6th place finish. And if they continue to build on this result, then maybe we will be calling them "elite low-sticks" by November.
There were just 53 seconds that separated Kleiman and Chen, the Blue Jays' first and final scorers. When you compare that to the Blue Streaks’ time-spread of 1:48, it doesn't come as much surprise that they were able to pull off the upset.
Despite not having a single athlete scoring single-digit points, the Blue Jays proved that their depth and pack-time is more than capable of keeping them nationally competitive.
Now, let's not get this twisted -- this was still an early September meet. And while we expect North Central and Johns Hopkins to continue to improve, the same can be said about John Carroll and the rest of the country.
Two of our top-three teams gave us an early-season battle that should provide us with a glimpse into how they will fare against each other at the national meet later this season.
The Knights of SUNY Geneseo and the Blue Jays of Johns Hopkins finished 3rd and 4th, respectively, at the MSU Spartan Invitational this past Friday. The teams were separated by 15 points (with SUNY Geneseo getting the win), but the two programs went nearly blow-for-blow in their scoring efforts, with the Knights coming out on top.
Johns Hopkins' Alex Ross (TSR #3) impressed with a 6th place overall finish, validating our suspicions of her being a true D3 national-caliber superstar. Meanwhile, Kathleen McCarey (TSR #7) was just two spots back in 8th place, also proving to be the star low-stick that we expected her to be.
Johns Hopkins was out to an early lead with Ross bettering McCarey. Not only that, but through three runners, the Blue Jays looked to be on their way to a (very minor) early-season upset.
Sara Stephenson (TSR #15) was 15th overall for the Blue Jays while Sydney Fridel was the team's third scorer in 35th place. That trio gave Johns Hopkins three runners across the line before the Knights' first three runners.
Still, the scoring gaps between these two teams weren't significant.
Windsor Ardner (TSR #16) was the second scorer for the Knights in 19th place while Sierra Doody finished 41st overall, a pleasantly surprising performance at that third scoring spot.
Then came the depth of SUNY Geneseo.
Marcie Hogan finished 47th overall while Lilly Fowler-Conner finished in 48th place to complete the scoring lineup for the Knights. SUNY Geneseo veteran Rachel Hirschkind (TSR #20) had an "off" day, finishing 52nd and outside of her team's top-five.
That kind of result from Hirschkind was likely a fluke, meaning that there is still far greater scoring potential within SUNY Geneseo's lineup later this fall.
As for Johns Hopkins, they had Viviana Li (64th) and Cooper Brotherton (68th) as their final two scorers. And while those were solid backend performances, the Knights had simply done too much in their fourth and fifth scoring spots for the Blue Jays to counter.
However, much like Hirschkind, there is likely greater scoring potential still lingering for the Blue Jays.
We expected Paloma Hancock to be part of this Johns Hopkins lineup and play a pivotal role during Friday's race. That's still the case for the rest of this season, but Hancock recorded a DNF at the MSU Spartan Invitational and that was a significant blow to the Blue Jays' scoring. We feel confident that she can make up the 15 points that separated these two teams.
So what does this all mean?
Well, it largely signals that our preseason rankings are still (somewhat) valid. The Blue Jays may have boasted stronger low-stick options than the Knights, but the depth of the SUNY Geneseo women propelled this team to an early-season head-to-head victory.
The Blue Jays are still a young team after their top-two runners, and that inexperience showed at Michigan State. Yes, improvements still need to be made, but we're confident that this past weekend was just a stepping stone for a team that still has tons of upside.
As for the Knights, this is an excellent starting point in their season. A 3rd place finish in a strong, competitive meet should only reinforce that they're a team capable of competing for a national title.
U. Chicago Women Dominate Gil Dodds Invitational
The Maroons of U. of Chicago wasted no time reminding the country why they were ranked at TSR #5 to begin the preseason.
The Lady Maroons ran away with the team title, scoring just 24 points at the Gil Dodds Invitational. That was 18 points better than our current TSR #6 team, Washington U. That result also suggested that the gap between those two teams might be more significant than we initially thought.
Lucy Groothuis and Anna Kenig-Ziesler had superb races, finishing 1st and 2nd overall, knocking off Washington U.'s star front-runner, Emily Konkus (TSR #19), in the process. That was a very nice boost in low-stick scoring which was one of many things that went right for U. Chicago.
Frances Schaeffler finished 4th overall, making it three Maroon athletes inside the top-five, individually. Katarina Brimac and Caitlin Jorgensen were the final two scorers for U. of Chicago, finishing 8th and 9th, respectively.
The Maroons had all seven of their athletes across the line before the Bears did. Sophie Tedesco and Cat Wimmer were the final two athletes for U. of Chicago, finishing in 15th and 18th place.
Of those seven athletes, only one is an underclassman and that is Tedesco. The amount of experience and depth that this team brings to the starting line will be tough to beat regularly.
It was also encouraging to see Groothuis and Kenig-Ziesler take down one of the better runners in the country on the Division Three side, leading the Maroons to the team title. Both women were expected to be part of this varsity squad on Saturday, but leading the Maroons like they did was not something we had entirely predicted.
But that's not all!
The Maroons did all of that without arguably their best runner. Claudia Harnett (TSR #11) didn't race this past weekend and the same can be said for Maddie Kelly, making U. Chicago's result even more impressive.
Both women are expected to be part of U. of Chicago’s scoring lineup as we move through the rest of this season, but to see this team succeed without them only instills more confidence in how we feel about the Maroons in the coming months.
If this early-season race is any indication, the Maroons could very well be better than our TSR #5 preseason ranking and could realistically be looking at a podium finish to end their 2022 season on the grass.
Quick Hits
We saw the Pomona-Pitzer men take home a top-five team finish at the UCR Invitational over the weekend. As expected, their depth was fantastic against some really strong competition. The Sagehens had all five of their scorers finish inside the top-60 and they also threw down a 20-second time-spread to score 197 points. That was better than UC-Irvine, Arizona and Arizona State to name a few. The only teams to beat the Sagehens were Cal Poly, Southern Utah and host UC-Riverside. We should, however, note that top-tier scorers like Florsheim, Fearon and Widlansky fell back pretty far in the results. Was that intentional? It's hard to say, but it's also hard to put too much stock in a race from mid-September.
The Amherst women had a nearly perfect score at the Little Three XC Championships, finishing with 17 points. Led by Mary Kate McGranahan, the Mammoths placed four women inside the top-five and five women inside the top-seven. They also defeated the Williams Ephs by 39 points. However, before we panic about Williams, it’s worth noting that they did not run what we would consider to be their "A" team. We still have plenty to see from the Mammoths this season, but we’re encouraged that they didn't have to rely on Sophia Wolmer to be successful.
The Carleton Knights took down St. Olaf at the St. Olaf Invite where Clara Mayfield (TSR #6) dominated the race. She took home the individual title by 73 seconds while leading the Knights to a 1-2-3 finish. That team ultimately scored 45 points, just three points better than the Oles, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Carleton looks to have a very good trio in Mayfield, Hannah Preisser and Sophie McManus. Some adjustments on the backend of their lineup could easily move this team into the top-10 of our rankings.
