TSR's 2022 D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Men): Update #1

TSR Collaboration
Oct 10, 2022
8 min read

Written by Kevin Fischer & Brett Haffner, additional commentary and edits by Garrett Zatlin

NOTE: Theses rankings are based on how a team fared throughout the entirety of a season, not just how they ran at the NCAA XC Championships.

KEY

(Unranked):

Was not ranked in our last update.

(#/#):

First number indicates how much the team has moved in the rankings.

The second number indicates where the team was ranked in our last update.

10. John Carroll Blue Streaks (-7 / 3)

The John Carroll men have been underperforming compared to our expectations, but in hindsight, it was always going to be difficult to replace Jamie Dailey, Ian Pierson, Andrew Miner and Jared Arnold.

And the fact that Cormac Peppard-Kramer hasn't been racing this fall (at all) is a sucker punch loss that has ultimately made it too difficult for JCU to meet expectations.

Losing to Johns Hopkins and RPI at Paul Short certainly wasn’t what the Blue Streaks had in mind at the beginning of the season, and there have been some individuals who we thought we would see more from.

However, there are bright spots for this team as well, the most obvious of which is the dominance thus far of Alex Phillip. Behind Phillip, Barrett Scheatzle is also running well and Dominic Delmoro is settling in nicely to bigger scoring role compared to last year.

We have been pretty critical of John Carroll so far this season, and rightfully so, but there are signs that this can still be a very solid team...our preseason expectations for them may have just been a little bit unfair.

9. Johns Hopkins Blue Jays (Unranked)

The rise of the Johns Hopkins men in 2022 has been one of the more pleasant surprises of this fall. After a 24th place finish at the 2021 cross country national meet, the Blue Jays are poised to obliterate that underwhelming result with the scoring boost that they’ve developed over the last year.

The Blue Jays’ depth has been on full display this fall with some notable tight-knit packs providing steadiness to their scoring prowess.

Their lineup order has shifted around in their two races this fall, but Matthew Kleiman and Gavin McElhennon are both trending in the direction of being true low-sticks this fall, both placing just outside the top-100 at the uber-competitive Paul Short Invite.

After those two men, Daniel Chen, Sean Enright, Emmanuel Leblond and Charlie Teeter are all looking like really solid options to support the team’s backend scoring prowess. In theory, on a really good day, any of those guys could hang with Kleiman and McElhennon, giving them flexibility if someone might not have their best day.

The Blue Jays employed a 35 second time-spread between their top-six runners at the Paul Short Invite which might end up being a cornerstone attribute toward their success this fall if they can continue to keep a tight-knit pack.

8. Carnegie Mellon Tartans (Unranked)

Losing two very talented runners in Michael O'Broin and Matthew Karee was a big loss for the Carnegie Mellon Tartans, but they had one unique feature at last year’s 2021 national meet: They were one of the youngest teams on the course.

While they fell under our radar up until this point of the season, the Tartans brought their "A" game to the Paul Short Invite and showed us that they absolutely deserved a spot in our rankings, winning the "Brown" race against some other strong Division Three programs.

Colin McLaughlin, who competed at last year's national meet as a freshman, is a strong ace for the Tartans after placing 8th overall in the "Brown" race at Paul Short.

Running a very similar team race to the Johns Hopkins men, the Tartans utilized a very strong pack from their second to their sixth runners, putting six men under 24:47 for 8000 meters with usual scorer Eamon Brady and 1500 meters national qualifier Aleksei Seletskiy right behind them.

That, in turn, gave this team some extra wiggle room and depth.

It would have been great to see Carnegie Mellon in the "Gold" race to see how they’d stack up in a true head-to-head battle with RPI and Johns Hopkins, but their times make it clear that it would have been a very close battle between these three teams.

We’ll have to keep a close eye out for the Tartans when the postseason rolls around. They have a lot of interchangeableness to their lineup which theoretically makes it really difficult for them to have a poor outing.

7. UW-La Crosse Eagles (-2 / 5)

The biggest revelation that we’ve seen from the UW-La Crosse men this fall is the presence of Isaac Wegner as a second low-stick for the Eagles, giving them immense firepower behind the likes of Ethan Gregg.

Gregg has been dominant this fall, winning both the Griak Invitational as well as the D3 National Preview. But frankly, neither of those results were terribly surprising given his from last year momentum as well as his long distance strength.

What has been surprising, however, is that the Eagles’ have been struggling (slightly) after those two guys. The UW-La Crosse men are usually known for having some good depth, but their current scoring pack is a little farther back than we might have expected coming into this season.

Parker Huhn and Corey Fairchild have the potential to get the job done, running solid races at the D3 National Preview recently, but they were finishing over a minute behind Gregg as their team's third and fourth scorers.

They’ll need to trim that gap down a bit to help their team succeed in the second-half of this 2022 cross country season.

6. RPI Engineers (Unranked)

Finishing as the top Division Three team in the "Gold" race at the Paul Short Invite, the RPI men have established themselves as not just a solid team, but a team that could potentially compete for a podium finish at the national meet later this fall.

Monster performances by Cory Kennedy and Matthew Lecky were instrumental to the team’s latest success with those two men running well under 24 minutes on that blazing fast 8000 meters course. They also finished as the second and third-best Division Three runners in that field.

We knew Lecky was this good, but having Kennedy be this good is a welcomed surprise. That could turn into something dangerously potent come the postseason. In fact, the Engineers are looking like one of the stronger scoring duos in Division Three at the moment.

Their backend scoring depth has been solid, but RPI will definitely need to compete with the likes of other top teams' supporting casts if they want to continue to replicate the success that they saw at Paul Short.

5. North Central Cardinals (Unranked)

Admittedly, North Central wasn’t even close to being on our radar in our first edition of our team rankings.

The last year or so has been a struggle for them (relative to historical expectations) with no distance running national meet qualifiers. It seemed as though the North Central program that we once knew had dissipated in front of our eyes.

However, the Cardinals have put all of those concerns to rest in 2022, displaying team strength that is becoming of their well-known culture and Division Three prowess.

Max Svienty and Braden Nicholson lead the charge for this team, but nearly all their scorers are close behind them. Julian Higueros, Connor Riss, Andrew Guimond and Thomas Rohr all finished less than 30 seconds behind that scoring duo.

We’re seeing a refreshing return to form from this current North Central lineup which should, in theory, also extend to the postseason.

4. Wartburg Knights (+4 / 8)

Despite some key losses to graduation, Wartburg looks like one of the strongest teams in the country again so far. Christopher Collett is the star of the show as expected and Morgan Shirley-Faribairn has been solid in the secondary scoring slot.

But the trio of Sam Schmitz, Connor Lancial and Jacob Green have been the reason why the Knights are where they are. These three guys have performed very well so far this season and have answered some of the lingering questions that we had about Wartburg coming into the season.

The Knights have yet to lose to any competition this season, but admittedly, bigger challenges will soon be on the way. Schedule-wise, this has actually been a very similar start to what we saw from Wartburg last fall.

It'll take a couple of races, but we will soon figure out whether or not the Knights are true contenders for the podium in 2022...or even the national title.

3. Williams Ephs (0 / 3)

Williams opened their season with a shocking 40-point loss to an RPI team that we didn’t expect much from at the time. Of course, we also didn't expect RPI to be as good as they have been.

But since then, the Williams men have been much better. Elias Lindgren is blowing away every field he toes the line for, Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos looks more like himself and the Ephs have taken their frustrations out on Amherst twice, most recently sweeping the top-10 spots at the Purple Valley Classic.

While we haven’t seen them tested against nationally elite competition since their season opener, it is pretty clear to us that they aren’t the same team from a month ago. And truthfully, that's something that most D3 likely recognized earlier this fall.

The Ephs will get a chance to definitively show the nation who they truly are at the Connecticut College Invitational this coming weekend where they'll look to make a statement against a handful of top-ranked programs.

2. MIT Engineers (0 / 2)

After shaking off the rust in the early portion of the season, the MIT Engineers flexed their talent at the D3 National Preview, running away with the team race in the final mile.

In fact, with a mile to go in that race, the Engineers were dead-even with North Central and UW-La Crosse...but ended up winning by 36 points over the Cardinals.

That’s how a powerhouse program closes a race.

Reigning All-Americans Andrew Mah, Sam Acquaviva and Matthew Kearney are looking as good as ever, keeping things tight-knit while all having a great low-stick presence.

The only downside for the Engineers is that their pack isn’t as potent as it was last year.

That said, it's also only mid-season, so it wouldn’t shock us to see a return to that absurdly great pack-racing that they employed throughout last year— at least with their first few guys.

That strategy could ultimately be the difference-maker that allows the Engineers to make a jump to the next level and to give Pomona-Pitzer a challenge.

1. Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (0 / 1)

Pomona-Pitzer stays at the top of our rankings this week, mostly on the merit of being the defending national champions.

We have seen their top guys race a couple times this year, holding their own against some solid D1 and D2 teams. And while they haven’t looked bad by any means, we also haven’t seen quite what we expected from Ethan Widlansky and Derek Fearon to this point.

However, others have stepped up.

It should be noted that we haven’t seen Pomona-Pitzer compete against another elite D3 programs so far this season. The Sagehens rested two weekends ago while other high-level D3 teams were competing at Paul Short, Pre-Nationals and other big meets.

It’s an interesting scheduling strategy that leads us to not know quite as much about this year’s team as we would like to, but we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt.