.png)
TSR's 2023 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Rankings (Men): #2 MIT Engineers
- Conor Daly
- Sep 13, 2023
- 7 min read
Written by Conor Daly, edits and additional commentary by Gavin Struve and 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.
When evaluating the MIT men in 2023, there’s both good and bad news.
We’ll start with the former.
The good news is that the Engineers were national champions last fall.
That leaves us with the bad news, which is that they are not immune to key scoring losses due to graduation. MIT returns just two of their top-five scorers who helped the program reach its first cross country national title a year ago.
It will be tough for the Engineers to find themselves back in title contention this fall, and yet, we have faith in them finding a way to do so. After all, they have had promising scoring options in waiting, many of whom could surprise us this fall.
* * *
As much as we appreciate compelling storylines, there honestly wasn’t much trial and tribulation for MIT on the way to their national title last fall.
They made it look easy...all of the time.
MIT opened up their 2022 cross country season at the D3 National Preview. There, the Engineers took a dominant win over solid North Central and UW-La Crosse. The now-graduated duo of Andrew Mah and Matthew Kearney lead the way in 6th and 9th place, respectively. Sam Acquaviva followed in 11th place while Vedang Lad took 16th and Lowell Hensgen finished in 20th.
That was a strong performance highlighted by legitimate upper-tier firepower and depth through five runners. Of course, there was still a lot of work to be done before the "Big Dance" in November.
At the Connecticut College Invitational, the MIT men continued to improve, this time showing significant firepower up front with Acquaviva and Kearney in 3rd and 4th place, respectively. Lad and Mah placed 10th and 12th while Ryan Wilson broke into the team’s top-five for the first time that season.
The result was another convincing win, this time over a highly-regarded Williams program. The team's collective firepower was seemingly improving and their scoring options were only growing more plentiful. On paper, they were building great momentum.
Then, MIT essentially had an inter-squad meet at the NEWMAC XC Championships, sweeping the top-six spots and taking 11 of the top-13 places. Yet again, the Engineers were trending in the right direction as they entered the postseason and their top pack was getting both tighter and faster.
MIT next went to the East Regional XC Championships which proved no more competitive than their conference meet. The moderate quality of the field allowed the Engineers to essentially “tempo” the race, meaning that they did not go all-out and instead ran a comfortable effort in an attempt to save their energy for the national stage the following week.
And at the national meet, that strategy paid off perfectly.
Wilson had his best cross country performance of his career, finishing 5th overall in what was a stunning elite low-stick result. But we don’t want to overlook the fact that Acquaviva was lights out as well, finishing ahead of Wilson in 3rd place!
Kearney was also in the top pack, finishing in 14th which would have made him a top-tier low-stick on any other team. The rest of MIT’s scorers were All-Americans as Henry Hardart placed 36th while Mah was just one place behind him in 37th.
In the end, MIT was undoubtedly the best team on that day as they had been through much of the season. The Engineers won the 2022 NCAA XC Championships by over 50 points for a fairytale ending to their season.
* * *
As we touched on above, MIT is losing three All-Americans from last year's team, including an all-time talent in Ryan Wilson who is transferring to Duke (for graduate school). That departure, plus the losses of Matthew Kearney and Andrew Mah, will cause a significant shift in this team's makeup and identity.
While we do believe that this team will still be plenty deep in 2023, we also know that they'll need to find new low-stick scoring options to replace their lost firepower. And yet, despite all of that, we don't expect the end product to be much worse.
After serving as MIT’s top finisher on the national stage last year, Sam Acquaviva is looking to lead this team towards the same result. In his fifth year of competition this fall, he should be able to go head-to-head with anyone in Division Three. He’s more than capable of doing just that after two consecutive top-15 finishes at the cross country national meet.
On the indoor oval, Acquaviva continued his success by posting exciting marks across several different events. He ran PRs of 4:10 (mile), 8:00 (3k) and 13:57 (5k), marks that very few men at this level can match.
However, come the outdoor track season, Acquaviva seemed to be battling a setback. He had multiple DNS and DNF results to his name, only finishing a single race.
While there are still questions regarding his availability, Acquaviva has proven that, when he's at 100%, he can be one of the nation’s best, acting as a key low-stick in every meet this fall. He enters this season at TSR #3 in our preseason top-20 individual rankings.
Someone who should be more than up to the task of following Acquaviva is fifth-year classmate, Vedang Lad. This distance specialist has displayed great consistency throughout his career, emerging as a fringe scorer for MIT throughout last fall. Not only that, but Lad has been fairly reliable on the national stage, placing 48th and 43rd at the cross country national meet over the past two seasons.
At the 2023 NCAA Outdoor Championships, Lad ran a PR of 29:49 (10k), putting him in accomplished company and showing some of his top-end capabilities. MIT is lucky to have a reliable complementary stud like Lad who they can rely on to be healthy and perform well.
Of course, how much more he improves could ultimately determine if the Engineers have enough firepower to compete for a national team title yet again.
Henry Hardart, who was just a tad behind Lad for most of last fall until the national meet, also returns to this lineup. As a backend member of the All-American ranks last year, Hardart looks primed to make a jump in his performances on the grass this fall.
Admittedly, Hardart doesn’t have the same kind of extensive history of solid cross country results that we would like from a prospective low-stick. He only finished three good, but not overly impressive, races during the 2022 season before outperforming expectations at the national meet with a 35th place run. In 2021, he raced just thrice on the grass.
But that may not matter.
The 3:46 (1500) man is coming off of his most exciting track season yet, leaving us with plenty of optimism that he can translate that to the grass.
Somewhat shockingly, Hardart has never run under 25:10 for the 8k distance despite holding All-American credentials on the grass and impressive track times. This suggests that Hardart thrives in slower, more strategic races, like ones with hillier terrain or adverse weather conditions native to the northeast.
Also returning from last year’s national meet lineup is Lowell Hensgen who was a valuable scoring piece last fall, acting as an absolute metronome who was as steady as one can be.
As a key scorer in most of the Engineers’ meets, some of Hensgen’s best days include taking 3rd at the NEWMAC XC Championships and 57th at the cross country national meet. As someone who has been steadily climbing the ranks, Hensgen should look to expand upon his role this year. He's another runner who seems due for a breakout season.
* * *
Through four runners, we feel very optimistic about this team. We know that they have a true superstar ace and three other men who could all realistically be All-Americans in November. In fact, that may be the baseline expectation for them.
But when it comes to the rest of this lineup, MIT will need to look outside of their returners from last year’s national meet to properly defend their 2022 title.
One name who could be just what the Engineers need in their fifth man is Pablo Arroyo. He placed 12th at the NEWMAC XC Championships and 7th at the regional meet. Arroyo was just short of earning a chance to race the national meet where he was replaced by Wilson.
But ever since then, this rising distance talent has been on a tear.
This past winter, Arroyo ran a very impressive 4:09 (mile) PR at the 2023 indoor national meet. On the outdoor oval, he ran a 9:00 (steeple) PR and punched his ticket to the national meet once again.
Arroyo has been gaining valuable experience in championship settings which will be crucial to how he performs in high-pressure scenarios in the fall, making him the leading candidate for what’s expected to be the final top-five spot.
Past Arroyo, it’s shaping up to be a battle of the Jacob’s between Jacob Hansen and Jacob Cobb. And we’re not going to count out Sam Coutts either, even if his name isn’t Jacob.
* * *
Simply put, things went really well for this Boston-based program from start to finish last year. But with a handful of new faces and certain names needing to new assume scoring roles, it's fair to have some uncertainty about just how good this team will be in 2023.
Even so, we can’t overlook the national level experience that many of MIT’s top runners have on both the grass and track. That leads us to valuing them (and the team as a whole) very highly. After all, three of their four returners from last year’s national meet are going to be fifth-year athletes in 2023.
Teams with a veteran-heavy build tend to be reliable, especially on big stages. Based on that, we trust the Engineers to be healthy, fit and able to produce well-executed races come November.
The Engineers, who were seen as underdogs for the 2022 national title, battled the snow, wind and frigid temperatures at last year’s national meet to come out on top.
With the 2023 NCAA XC Championships in Pennsylvania, we could definitely see those conditions again. I wouldn’t want to be a team stepping to the line on the national stage in inclement weather against this experienced, successful and persevering MIT team.
