The Current Landscape Of Division Two & Division Three

Written by John Cusick, additional edits and commentary by Garrett Zatlin

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Below, we asked our fellow D2/D3 editor, John Cusick, a handful of questions about some of the recent performances that we saw around the NCAA this past weekend. Here is were a few of John's thoughts..

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Highlight four D2 athletes (two men and two women) and four D3 athletes (two men and two women) who have impressed you so far this outdoor track season.

In total, here are my eight names...

Isaac Prather (Concord) (D2)

I tried to avoid names who we have mentioned throughout the year, but not highlighting Isaac Prather was too hard. The Concord veteran has already raced six times this outdoor track season, but it’s been his last three weekends that made him discussion-worthy.

The east coast ace ran 13:57 for 5000 meters at the Raleigh Relays, breaking 14:00 for the first time and setting a new personal best by nine seconds. The following weekend, he ran 3:49 (1500), breaking 3:50 for the first time while improving by six seconds in the process. And finally, Prather ran 8:47 (!) for the steeplechase this past weekend, setting another personal best by nine seconds.

You’re watching his breakout season happen right before your eyes.

Ian Sherlock (Shippensburg) (D2)

Ian Sherlock is likely a name that you haven’t heard before, but that could change if he keeps racing like he has this outdoor track season.

In Sherlock's last three races, he has set three personal bests and is primed to run even faster as the year progresses. Three weeks ago, we saw Sherlock run 3:49 (1500) and 1:53 (800) to improve by seven and five seconds in those respective events. Then, two weeks ago, the budding Shippensburg star ran 9:09 in the steeplechase, landing him inside the top-10 of the D2 national leaderboard.

Who knows if he will make the national meet, but if he does, then he could play spoiler...

Rachael Morrison (Lewis) (D2)

Rachael Morrison transferred from Lindenwood to Lewis this past fall and has been reaping the benefits of that move since.

Even so, nothing on her recent resume screamed that she was taking a giant step forward... until this outdoor track season. Yes, she’s only raced one time, but she clocked a time of 16:53 for 5000 meters at the Washington U. Distance Carnival, finishing in 9th place overall.

A solid result on paper but when you see that Morrison improved her 5k time by 45 seconds it becomes apparent that things are clicking for her at Lewis. As I said, she’s raced just one time this outdoor track season and she should only get better with each new race.

Lynette Ruiz (Biola) (D2)

Lynette Ruiz is the final Division Two athlete who I want to highlight.

Known as a long distance athlete, Ruiz has cut her teeth on the national stage, but hasn’t seen much success there. That looks to change this year as the Biola star is clearly on a different level regarding her fitness.

Already this season, we have seen Ruiz run 17:01 for 5000 meters which is just two seconds off of her personal best. That came a month ago to the date, telling us that she was already in the best fitness of her life. Since then, Ruiz has now run 34:27 for 10,000 meters and that time is a full minute better than her previous best.

With her newfound fitness, the Biola standout should find success on the national stage as she aims for her first All-American honor.

Chasen Hunt (Lynchburg) (D3)

Sure, Chasen Hunt is just a freshman at Lynchburg, but that doesn’t take away from how good he’s been so far this spring.

Hunt has run 1:55 (800), 3:50 (1500) and 14:29 (5000), showcasing a level of range that most freshmen don’t. Those times will need to improve if he wants to enter the national conversation, but this is a huge step in the right direction for the rookie.

And given the success of other Lynchburg athletes such as Tor Hotung-Davidsen, Frank Csorba and Sam Llazena, Hunt could be the next in line of top athletes competing for the Hornets.

Ivan Appleton (Tufts) (D3)

The disclaimer for Ivan Appleton is that his times aren’t as strong as those listed throughout this eight-person answer. That, however, doesn’t take away from the fact that the Tufts sophomore is continuing to get better.

Appleton has raced three times this outdoor track season, registering three personal bests in the process. The first PR was in the 5000 meters where he ran 14:43, improving by 55 seconds from his previous personal best. Then he went on to run 9:08 in the steeplechase, improving by 20 seconds and landing the NCAA #6 spot on the national leaderboard. He capped off his strong start with a time of 3:58 in the 1500 meters in his first-ever attempt at that discipline.

If he keeps taking leaps like this, then he could be a prominent name, not only this coming May, but for years to come.

Caroline McMartin (Central College) (D3)

Caroline McMartin was a name that was on our “Just Missed” list in our first edition of outdoor track rankings from last week. However, her recent performances have made her someone worth talking about right now.

After taking a break after the indoor national meet, McMartin has toed the line for the past two weekends and has impressed in all three of her efforts.

She set a new personal best in the 5000 meters by running 16:50, improving upon her previous PR in the event by 39 seconds. The following weekend, McMartin ran 2:18 (800) and 4:35 (1500), both personal bests. Yes, a 2:18 half-mile mark isn’t the best time ever, but it was a four-second improvement in the event. It also came after her 1500 meter race which saw her improve by seven seconds.

Her 1500 meter and 5000 meter times place her inside the top-10 on the national leaderboard. And if she keeps this up, the, we could see McMartin enter the conversation as a legitimate All-American threat a month from now.

Grace Hadley (WPI) (D3)

If you asked Grace Hadley what the ideal start to her outdoor track season looked like, then she’d likely tell you that her performances thus far are nearly perfect.

Hadley started the season with a 14-second improvement in the 1500 meters as she ran 4:37 at the Black & Gold Invitational. The following weekend, we saw Hadley run 16:53 (!) for 5000 meters, landing her at NCAA #7 on the national leaderboard.

Her previous best for 5000 meters?

18:46.

Yes, that’s nearly a two-minute improvement for Hadley already this season! If her season ended now, then we think Hadley would walk away saying it was a success.

With the season so young, and presumably faster times to come, which distance event(s) are you most interested in moving forward for each division?

We will start with the Division Two men’s 800 meters.

The half-mile distance was electric during the indoor track season and it has all of the makings to be even more thrilling during the spring months.

With the outdoor national meet in Pueblo, Colorado this year, it’s obvious that athletes who train at altitude will have an inherent advantage. However, that's also the event that most likely evens out the best when it comes to racing at altitude.

Angelo State's Ousamma El Bouchayby nearly broke the collegiate 800 meter record this season, running 1:45.31 while Reece Sharman-Newell has run 1:47.41 on his home track (the national meet site), making his case as the favorite for the national title.

Meanwhile, Wes Ferguson has run 1:47.87 for the same distance and is the third athlete under the 1:48 barrier just three weeks removed from the indoor national meet. The fight NCAA gold over 800 meters will likely prove to be a legendary one and it could be a matchup that will be remembered for a long time.

On the women’s side of Division Two, it’s easily the 5000 meters.

So far, we’ve seen Florance Uwajeneza and Lindsay Cunningham run under 16:10 for the event. But conversely, we have not seen Brianna Robles contest the event, nor has Zoe Baker. Both women should run faster than 16:10 for this distance with the former being a national title favorite.

There’s also another reality where Stephanie Cotter moves up to that discipline which could be a huge development in regards to who wins the national title over the course of 5000 meters. Of course, we still need to see Cotter debut in her main event, the 1500 meters, before we can say she will move up to contest for that national title.

And truthfully, her running the 5k seems a little bit like a pipedream.

With that said, there is a very good chance that we see three women run under the 16:00 barrier in the coming weeks. It would be just the second time in the TFRRS-tracked era (since 2014), that multiple women have run under 16:00 (the most recent season was in 2021).

Moving on to Division Three, the events become a tad more muddled when you look at the current state of events.

On the men’s side, the first event that really sticks out to me is the 10,000 meters.

We’ve seen Ethan Gregg run 28:40 so far this season while Matthew Kearney and Max Svienty have run 29:13 and 29:14, respectively, in their first-ever attempts at the distance. Those three times alone are already faster than anyone who ran the 10k last year who wasn’t named Alex Phillip.

Speaking of Phillip, he’s still yet to race a 10k this outdoor track season and he’s fresh off of setting a new D2 collegiate record in the 5k, running 13:47.

Meanwhile, we have still not seen Elias Lindgren, Tyler Morris or Simon Heys contest the 25-lap affair, meaning that by the end of the season, we could have multiple men under the 29:00 barrier for the first time in Division Three history (as far as available TFRRS date is concerned).

Sure, it may be a little far-fetched to think that we could have five or six men under the 29:00 barrier for 10,000 meters, but I feel confident in the idea that we will likely have at least three before the national meet rolls around.

Looking at the women’s events for Division Three, I’m incredibly invested in the steeplechase.

Already this season, there have been three women to run under 10:40 for the event. Last year, there were only five women over the course of the outdoor track season to run below that time. Evie Miller has graduated since then, leaving the national title up for grabs.

Aubrie Fisher, Sara Stephenson and Rachel Hirschkind are the top-three performers early-on this season and all of those women will return from last year’s steeplechase final, making them the early candidates to take home the newly-vacated throne.

With more than half of the field from last year’s national meet steeple final returning, the race for NCAA gold will come down to having the most wits about them. Yes, we can likely give the early edge to Fisher as she was the runner-up last spring and has the fastest time early-on in 2023. But if we see athletes begin to run sub-10:40 the rest of the way, then picking a national title favorite will prove easier said than done.

At the end of the season, which event will prove to be the hardest to win a national title in?

If we are looking at this from a competition perspective, then the men’s and women’s 5k/10k races are going to prove to be the most difficult national titles to win. Given that the outdoor national meet will be in Pueblo, Colorado this season it’s going to make any athlete who doesn’t train at altitude that much harder when it comes to competing.

On the men’s side, it means that you have to go through Dillon Powell, Awet Beraki and Afewerki Zeru in some shape or form -- and that will be incredibly difficult for someone who trains at anything lower than 2000 feet of elevation.

On the women’s side, we’re looking directly at Brianna Robles and Lindsay Cunningham. Those two runners alone have already made it incredibly difficult to win a national title in the 5k/10k, but it’s only gotten that much harder after the indoor national meet.

Robles is the defending outdoor national champion in the 5000 meters and was the runner-up finisher at the 2022 outdoor national meet in the 10,000 meters -- and now she gets to race for a national title at altitude.

We’ve seen how elite Cunningham is when it comes to racing given her success on the grass and on the indoor oval, but she’ll somehow need to take it to another level if she wants to dominate as she did in Virginia Beach.

Regarding Division Three, it’s hard not to pick the men’s and women’s 1500 meters at this point in the season. But with that said, I think that the men’s 5000 meters is going to be the hardest to win a national title in.

Yes, Alex Phillip just set a new collegiate record in the event, but he did the same thing during the indoor track season and walked away with a silver medal over that distance.

Christian Patzka hasn’t contested the 5k yet and he’s the one who took Phillip down at the indoor national meet...although the steeplechase will likely be the priority of this Warhawk star. Ethan Gregg just ran 28:40 for 10,000 meters, telling us that his 13:52 (5k) personal best is likely in jeopardy whenever he toes the line for 12.5 laps.

On the women’s side of Division Three, I will be sticking with my original pick of the 1500 meters.

The times early-on this season aren’t anything special, but as of right now, you would need to run sub-4:35 to crack the top-10 in the event. Last year, at the end of the outdoor track season, you needed to run sub-4:30 to crack into the top-10.

It’s more than likely that we will see that same kind of trajectory here in 2023, making the metric mile one of the strongest events in terms of parity.

Annika Urban just ran 4:26.17 (1500) and currently sits atop the national leaderboard, tabbing her as the early national title favorite. That sentiment is echoed after her dominant win in the mile at this past year’s indoor national meet.

Given the recent rewriting of the NCAA All-Time lists for Division Two and Division Three, do you anticipate any additional collegiate records being broken this outdoor track season? If so, which event(s) and how fast?

I will try and make this as short and sweet as possible...which isn't easy.

We’ve already seen two collegiate records fall this season with Kassie Parker breaking the women’s 10,000 meter record by running 32:36 while Alex Phillip broke the 5000 meter record by running 13:47.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the next record to fall in Division Three will be the men’s 10,000 meters. Ethan Gregg just ran the second-fast 10k time in D3 history when he clocked his 28:40 mark. He is just shy of the record by two seconds. It only feels like a matter of time before Alex Phillip claims yet another collegiate record before we get to the national meet.

As for Division Two, I think there will be multiple records broken before the end of the outdoor track season.

The first one I want to discuss is the men’s 800 meters. I mentioned during our indoor national meet recap that Ousamma El Bouchayby would run 1:45 this spring and surprise the collegiate running scene.

Sure enough, he's done that already, nearly taking down a 28-year-old record in the process. If he gets another crack at a high-level field, then we will be talking about the first 1:44 half-miler in D2 history.

The next event record that I think will be broken is the men’s 5000 meters.

Dillon Powell has already run 13:30 for that distance this season and his personal best of 13:28 is just six seconds shy of the outdoor collegiate record for 5000 meters. If he is in the right race, then Powell could find himself chasing the 13:20 barrier and come out with a collegiate record.

The last event on the men’s side is the steeplechase. After Tabor Steven scorched the Earth in 2015 by running 8:26, it had been nearly a decade before we saw someone break 8:30 for the event again.

And the person who did go under that mark just so happened to be an Adams State athlete in Clement Duigou who ran 8:29 in the steeple last year. Ultimately, he fell to Reece Smith in the steeplechase final after Smith ran 8:33 to claim the national title.

If those two meet again in the regular season, then we could see a huge showdown that etches their names into the history books of D2.

The final event that I feel most confident in predicting the collegiate record will be broken in is the women’s 1500 meters. This is pretty self-explanatory when you look at the top-10 leaderboard and see that 4:11 is the current record. Stephanie Cotter’s personal best is 4:14 in the event and we all know what kind of shape the Irish native is currently in.

There’s no doubt that she’ll take a crack at a fast 1500 meters and you should see her walk away with a time under the 4:10 barrier making her one of the NCAA’s best middle distance athletes in the entire country regardless of division.