TSR's 2022 D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Women): Update #2

TSR Collaboration
Oct 24, 2022
7 min read

Written by Kevin Fischer, Hannah Thorn & Brett Haffner

Additional edits and commentary by John Cusick & Garrett Zatlin

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

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. UW-La Crosse Eagles (-1 / 9)

Running at their home meet last weekend, the Tori Neubauer Invitational, the UW-La Crosse men put together a dominant team performance, scoring a mere 32 points against some decent competition.

Spearheaded by Maddie Hannan, a national qualifier in the 1500 meters this past spring, the Eagles have employed their strong pack of Julia Anderon, Maddy Vantassel and Katelyn Chadwick to round out their first four scorers – a very consistent scoring group for this team.

With fifth scorer Jenna Lovejoy not far behind, the strength of the Eagles lies in their ability to maintain that strong 2-3-4 pack with Hannan as a solid low-stick. And if Lovejoy can continue to get closer to their pack, then that could go a long way for this team in the postseason.

Winning the WIAC XC Championships shouldn’t be a surprise for UW-La Crosse (barring any mishaps), so their next main test will come from the North Regional XC Championships where they’ll take on teams such as Carleton, Saint Olaf and all of the other schools in the WIAC.

9. Carleton Knights (Unranked)

In what was nearly the biggest surprise of the weekend at the Rowan Interregional Rumble, the Carleton Knights almost knocked-off the SUNY Geneseo Knights, losing by just one point in a 37 point to 38 point team battle.

While SUNY Geneseo did not have one of their top runners in Windsor Ardner, that doesn’t change the impressive performance that the Carleton women threw down, giving the New York-based Knights a run for their money.

Clara Mayfield continues to perform on the level that we expected out of her as she won the Rown Interregional Rumble by nearly 40 seconds. Her being a low-stick will always (and unsurprisingly) help Carleton in team standings.

However, it was the rest of this lineup where the greatest value lied.

Both Hannah Preisser and Sophia McManus had some "off" days in their previous outing at the Blugold Invitational, but rebounded extremely well at Rowan, placing 4th and 5th overall. They were able to ensure that Carleton had three runners finish before Geneseo’s second runner, a very strong indicator of their scoring prowess.

With Phoebe Ward and Libby Rowland running strong as Carleton’s fourth and fifth runners, placing 13th and 15th, respectively, they rounded out the Knights’ scoring lineup extremely well.

When you step back to evaluate this lineup, one could argue that the Carleton women had one of the most complete scoring fives that we have seen from any team so far this season.

However, with a roughly 40-second gap from their fifth to sixth runners, all five of those aforementioned scorers need to bring "A" game for Carleton every single time they run in order for the Knights to truly succeed in the postseason.

But with that one minor exception aside, it seems as though these five ladies can get the job done for the Knights.

8. Amherst Mammoths (-2 / 6)

Amherst is a team that we’ve been high on all season, but their performance at the Connecticut College Invitational was the first time that we’ve seen a crack in their consistent foundation this season.

While their 54-point deficit behind MIT would have been a little too much for the Mammoths to make up, beating Saint Olaf and Williams should have been in the cards.

Sophia Wolmer’s 4th place finish was about right, but usual low-stick Mary Kate McGranahan struggled, finishing 16th overall. After winning the Purple Valley XC Invite by nearly 30 seconds, seeing McGranahan not be close to the front was a bit surprising.

Having both Wolmer and McGranahan firing on all cylinders is one crucial component to the Mammoth’s team potential this fall, but that was only one underperformance amid an impressive season for McGranahan, so we shouldn’t be too concerned.

Outside of those two, Julia Schor looks like a solid third scorer for Amherst, showing flashes of poise throughout the season and even beating Wolmer back at the Little Three Invite in September. We’ll see if she can replicate a performance like that in the postseason.

7. Washington University Bears (0 / 7)

We’ve championed the Bears’ depth throughout the season so far, and relative to the field at the Augustana Interregional Invitational, they were...well, deep.

Even so, having great depth as our TSR #7 ranked team in Division Three is a lot different than having great depth as the top-two ranked teams in Division Three – that talent gap was apparent as the Bears finished a distant 3rd place behind U. of Chicago (TSR #1) and Wartburg (TSR #2) at Augustana.

Emily Konkus and Lindsay Ott finishing 4th and 8th, respectively, was an utterly fantastic result. Having two well-established low-sticks is huge for a team that usually relies on their pack-running.

We also can’t say that the next three scorers, Katie Rector, Avery McCammon and Ella Behrens, ran poor races at all – they all ran very solid, too!

And as a side note, this was Behrens’ first cross country race of the season. Big kudos to her on what could ultimately lead to a potentially high ceiling for this squad.

The only knock that we can give the Washington U. women was that their scoring pack was behind the Maroons’ and Knights’ respective scoring groups. Trying to match those teams is an admittedly difficult task, but scoring only 40 points less than Wartburg and 43 points less than U. of Chicago was a result that validates their ranking in a positive way.

6. MIT Engineers (+2 / 8)

The women from MIT made this jump due to their impressive showing at the Connecticut College Invitational. They took the team win over Saint Olaf, Williams and Amherst.

Quite convincingly too as it was by almost 50 points over the runner-up Oles.

Einat Gavish continues to race well, finishing 5th the other weekend in a time of 21:45. That is a new PR for Gavish which signals that she is getting stronger as the season goes on.

Behind Gavish was a trio of Engineers in Anna Haddad, Christina Crow and Gillian Roeder. Haddad finished in 10th while Crow and Roeder tied for 11th. That’s how close these women are running together -- they are tying!

Rounding out the team scoring was junior Kirsi Rajagopal. She finished 28th overall in 22:30. That 20-second gap isn’t massive, but a lot of women can fit in there and tally up a lot of points at a big meet like the NCAA XC Championships.

But overall, this MIT team has been an unexpected delight this season.

5. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athenas (0 / 5)

Because they are on the west coast, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps missed many of the bigger meets since our last update. They also haven’t raced since October 8th, so they did not move up or down our rankings. They are likely resting for the championship portion of the season where they can hopefully come out healthy and sharp.

4. Johns Hopkins Blue Streaks (0 / 4)

Johns Hopkins made the interesting decision to run a 5k at Panorama Farms against Division One competition the other weekend.

Maybe they were practicing for being in a big race or a fast field. But since they didn’t race against any Division Three competition, it is hard to judge exactly how good they were.

At Panorama, Alex Ross led the team by finishing 20th overall in a very strong field. She has been unbelievable this season and will be aiming for a top-five finish at the national meet.

Behind Ross was a pack of Sydney Fridel, Sara Stephenson, Triya Roy and Katharine Priu. They were separated by 30 seconds, so it’s clear that this group can still work together as a team in larger fields.

We don’t exactly love that this team skipped several competitive D3-centric meets to go race a 5k against Division One runners, but we should also know better than to question Bobby Van Allen. He will have these women ready to go in November when it matters.

3. SUNY Geneseo Knights (-1 / 2)

Despite missing out Windsor Ardner at the Rowan Interregional Rumble, the SUNY Geneseo women held on for a slim victory over Carleton. It certainly was not the biggest statement that they could have made, but it was a solid day, nonetheless.

That was also the first time this season that another D3 program gave them a serious scare.

Even though they won, it felt like the Knights took a slight step back when you compare their recent performance to what we've seen from Wartburg and U. of Chicago as of late.

Regardless, SUNY Geneseo should not be too discouraged. They may be underdogs for the national title now, but they are still very much in content to win it all.

This team will be in the mix in November, especially if we see a healthy Windsor Ardner.

2. Wartburg Knights (-1 / 1)

If you had told us that Wartburg would record a top-five time-spread of under a minute despite a 20:48 low-stick performance by Aubrie Fisher, I would have assumed that the Knights had done enough to earn the win the Augustana Interregional Invite.

However, U. of Chicago’s pack proved to be a little too much for them, and the Knights fell to the runner-up spot by just three points.

When your end goal as a team is a national title, any regular season loss to D3 competition can be hard to stomach. But this wasn’t at all a case of Wartburg running poorly. They simply got the short end of the stick in what was probably a clash of the two best teams in the country.

And truthfully, the Knights can still take away some encouragement from Augustana. This group is knocking on the door of NCAA gold and with some small improvements, they still have a good chance of coming away with the crown.

1. University of Chicago Maroons (+2 / 3)

We knew that U. of Chicago would be a formidable team this preseason, but we didn’t anticipate this.

This group started the season off strong and have consistently been improving as a unit. After D3 Pre-Nationals, we were very impressed with their "Big Three" of Lucy Groothuis, Anna Kenig-Ziesler and Frances Schaeffler. Still, we had questions about whether or not their fourth and fifth runners would be strong enough to put this team into the national title contender territory.

Well, they answered those questions emphatically at Augustana, posting a jaw-dropping 20-second top-five time-spread and a 30-second top-seven time-spread to take home a tight win over the Wartburg women.

The Maroons have a ton of momentum and are running at their best heading into the postseason. They will be the ones with the targets on their backs for the first time this year.