TSR's 2022 D3 XC Top 20 Individual Rankings (Women): Update #3

TSR Collaboration
Nov 8, 2022
11 min read

Written by Kevin Fischer, Hannah Thorn & Brett Haffner

Additional edits and commentary by John Cusick and 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.

20. Genna Girard, Sophomore, Williams (Unranked)

Genna Girard came away with a 2nd place finish at the NESCAC XC Championships, finishing only behind our TSR #14 runner, Mary Kate McGranahan. And with that result, Girard finds herself back in our rankings for the first time since the preseason.

Simply having her present has been a huge boost for the Williams women given her availability issues in the past. Luckily, she has improved in each of the three meets that she has contested this year.

At this point, Girard is getting dangerously close to her best and her very high ceiling can only be looked at as a positive as we head deeper into the postseason.

19. Sara Stephenson, Junior, Johns Hopkins (-11 / 8)

Sara Stephenson’s 4th place showing at the Centennial Conference XC Championships wasn’t ideal, but it truthfully didn't matter much at the end of the day. The only athletes who she lost to were her teammates and the Blue Jays were able to come away with a perfect score.

Even so, it is still slightly concerning to see her not in the top-three given that she hasn’t had much of an opportunity to prove herself against purely D3 competition this year. We gave her the benefit of the doubt in our last update, but now we aren’t quite as convinced that she's a top-10 talent in the country right now.

That said, Stephenson's 4th place finish the other weekend was four spots better than her 2021 performance. She'd later finish 5th at the Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships two weeks later.

If she can replicate that kind of performance again in 2022, then we'll feel slightly more comfortable moving her back inside our top-15.

18. Lindsay Ott, Junior, Washington U. (Unranked)

When you think of this year’s Washington U. team, Emily Konkus is probably the first name to come to mind. However, Lindsay Ott has broken onto the scene in a major way as well.

Ott's 6th place finish at the UAA XC Championships was probably her best performance yet, but she has had several big days this year and will be looking for more in the coming weeks.

Known as more of a middle distance threat, Ott has come into her own during the 2022 campaign. Her best finish at the national meet on the grass is 76th, but we're confident that she will improve upon that mark later this month.

17. Vivian Kane, Freshman, NYU (-4 / 13)

It took a few meets, but Vivian Kane showed her lack of collegiate championship experience at the UAA XC Championships the other weekend. Kane finished 10th overall in that race and was the second scorer for NYU, helping them to a 3rd place team finish.

Now, admittedly, the UAA is probably the most competitive conference in the country, so placing 10th is probably not as bad of a result as it looks to be on paper. Even so, it’s still not what we have become accustomed to seeing from Kane in her short career.

The NYU star drops a few spots in our rankings, but sticks around at TSR #17 on the merit of her impressive resume throughout this season.

16. Frances Schaeffler, Junior, U. of Chicago (-2 / 14)

Frances Schaeffler is another runner who wasn’t quite at her best at the UAA XC Championships a couple of weekends ago, finishing 9th place overall.

However, despite that not being her best day, we aren’t too concerned about Schaeffler.

Her top-five finishes at D3 Pre-Nationals and the Augustana Interregional Invitational clearly show us that she is one of the country's better distance talents. Her fitness that was shown in those performances hasn’t gone anywhere and we are expecting a bounce-back performance from her this weekend.

15. Maddie Hannan, Junior, UW-La Crosse (Unranked)

For most of the year, Maddie Hannan has been solid, but floated under our radar in terms of our rankings. Then she raised some eyebrows at the WIAC XC Championships with an impressive upset victory, holding off Carolyn Shult, who was sitting at TSR #18 at the time.

This may seem like a fluke at the surface level, but we don’t think it was. Hannan has been showing signs of improvement all season long and is simply peaking at the perfect time. Taking down a talent like Carolyn Shult doesn't just happen by accident.

We'll see Hannan face off against Shult yet again at the North Regional XC Championships this weekend. Once there, she can back up her statement win and validate her talent as one of the absolute best women in the country.

14. Mary Kate McGranahan, Junior, Amherst (+1 / 15)

At the NESCAC XC Championships, Mary Kate McGranahan proved that her underwhelming performance at the Connecticut College Invite was just a small fluke and nothing to be concerned about.

That's because The Amherst star quickly bounced back the other weekend by taking home the win against a loaded NESCAC field by 16 seconds, effectively reestablishing herself at the top-end of Division three.

McGranahan looks to have her momentum back at the perfect time going into the regional and national meets. Earning a win as convincing as hers is an extremely promising sign.

13. Meredith Bloss, Sophomore, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (+3 / 16)

Meredith Bloss continues to be an elite secondary scorer for the Athenas of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. That's because, at the SCIAC XC Championships, she finished 2nd place to her teammate, Natalie Bitetti.

Admittedly, Bloss fell 38 seconds behind Bitetti, but she also led the chase pack before gapping that group by seven seconds before they reached the finish line. That's plenty impressive in it's own right.

Truthfully, we don't have much more to say here. Bloss was expected to earn runner-up honors and she did just that. Her consistency and ongoing excellence is promising and it makes us feel better about her chances of a top result on the national stage.

12. Anna Kenig-Ziesler, Freshman, U. of Chicago (+5 / 17)

As we said earlier, the UAA conference was probably the deepest field in the country on the women’s side this year. So for Anna Kenig-Ziesler to come in 3rd place behind our TSR #9 runner, Emily Konkus, and our TSR #3 runner, Annika Urban, is a sneaky-great result for the senior.

The fact that her conference time of 21:41 over 6000 meters comes even close to her Augustana Interregional Invitational time of 21:30 shows how great of a day it was for her. She has been trading lead scoring duties with her teammates all season long, but we might start to see some separation this postseason as she continues to build her momentum.

Koenig-Ziesler was 20 seconds clear of Maddie Kelley, 29 seconds ahead of Lucy Groothuis and 32 seconds in front of Frances Schaeffler. That’s a big gap for a team that has been running together all year long -- and we don't think the Maroons ran poorly.

Koenig-Ziesler was just that good.

11. Kathleen McCarey, Junior, SUNY Geneseo (-1 / 10)

Kathleen McCarey has not raced since our last update.

10. Morgan Lee, Sophomore, RPI (-1 / 11)

After her performances at the Rowan Interregional Border Battle and Paul Short, we said that Morgan Lee was favored to win the Liberty League individual title. And sure enough, the RPI star left the Liberty League XC Championships with an individual title.

Lee left the lead pack behind at the halfway mark of the race and had already put a five-second gap between her and the field by the 4k mark. That margin eventually grew to 31 seconds as she finished in a time of 22:00.

That tells us that she went out conservatively and then turned on the burners.

It will be interesting to see if that tactic is successful for Lee in bigger races. It could work at her regional meet, but too many talented women in the field will be looking to do the same at the national meet.

Either way, Lee looks like she will qualify for her first cross country national meet this weekend and with that, she'll also look for her first All-American honor.

9. Emily Konkus, Junior, Washington U. (+3 / 12)

A 2nd place finish behind Annika Urban at the UAA XC Championships is by no means a bad day for Emily Konkus, especially as Urban had gapped the field by five seconds in the first mile.

Yes, it's true, Konkus was pretty far back and didn’t make her move until the 3k mark in the race. However, she gapped the chase pack in the next kilometer and then just had to hold off a hard-charging Anna Kenig-Ziesler for that runner-up finish.

Her result, as strong as it was, is simply another step forward for this senior as she tries to lead her Washington U. team to a podium finish in a couple of weeks. After finishing 41st at last year's national meet, one spot out of an All-American honor, Konkus looks primed to improve well beyond that result in 2022.

8. Natalie Bitetti, Sophomore, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (+3 / 11)

The SCIAC XC Championships was Natalie Bitetti’s race to lose. And sure enough, she delivered a blazing-fast time while securing that SCIAC individual title. Her mark of 21:19 was her fourth performance this season under 21:30, achieving that feat every race this fall.

It admittedly feels like we could rate Bitetti higher, but we don’t have enough results from her against top competition outside of her own.

That said, CMS' one race outside of California this year was Paul Short. Bitetti did have a great race there, finishing 3rd in the "Brown" race, but she was also beaten by Emory’s Annika Urban by 35 seconds. Although to be fair, Urban has been doing that to everyone this season.

Bitetti is the favorite to take the West Regional XC Championships individual title and besides her own teammate Meredith Bloss, there really shouldn’t be another challenger against her.

7. Ana Tucker, Junior, Hope (0 / 7)

There's not much to say here. Ana Tucker was expected to win the MIAA XC Championships and she did so convincingly. Her time of 20:52 was 42 seconds ahead of the runner-up.

Tucker has been one of the most consistent runners all season long. Even though she has only raced two 6k races this fall, both instances have been under 21 minutes. That's really encouraging consistency despite racing at such a high level.

She should be the favorite heading into the Great Lakes Regional XC Championships, a meet that could give her another boost of confidence before the NCAA XC Championships.

6. Aubrie Fisher, Junior, Wartburg (0 / 6)

We're really feeling for Aubrie Fisher right now. It feels like she has to constantly face Kassie Parker almost every time she toes the line, arguably the most difficult challenge that any D3 runner has ever had to face.

At the American Rivers XC Championships, Fisher place 2nd overall in a time of 22:06. That was over a minute behind Parker, but we don’t think we should be alarmed about that result.

We say that because a) That’s more of a testament to how good Parker is and not how Fisher performed, and b) she could have been directed to take it easy and simply deliver the team title to Wartburg.

That last part may have some legs to it. Fisher ran in the chase pack with four other teammates for most of the race. She didn’t separate from her teammates until around the 4k mark and the Knights ended up finishing in spots 2-3-4-5-6, so the plan was likely to run somewhat conservatively and win the team title.

5. Alex Ross, Senior, Johns Hopkins (0 / 5)

Alex Ross won the individual title, the team title and got the perfect score alongside her teammates at the Centennial XC Championships.

That is what we call the trifecta.

Her time of 21:36 was nine seconds ahead of teammate Paloma Hancock, but like many of our stars, we're assuming that Ross was able to hold back for some portion of the race and only unleash a surge when she needed to.

Aside from Paul Short, which was hardly a poor outing, Ross has been having a great season. She looks to be gearing up for a great November and has simply looked the sharpest she's ever been.

We’ll see what she has in store for us at the Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships which are coming up this weekend.

4. Clara Mayfield, Junior, Carleton (-1 / 3)

One racer who could not take it easy during the conference meet weekend was Clara Mayfield. That's because she had to face off against our TSR #2 runner, Fiona Smith.

Those two women separated from the rest of the field before the mile mark, but Smith had already gapped Mayfield by the 2000 meter mark. And not just a small gap, but by 13 seconds!

That gap only grew until the finish line where Smith ended the race 28 seconds ahead of Mayfield. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Mayfield was slow. Her time of 21:42 was still over 30 seconds faster than the rest of the field.

Mayfield is another one of those runners who has been super consistent all season long, so it will be interesting to see if she can keep it up this postseason. Although, before booking her trip to Michigan, she has to face Smith yet again at the North Regional XC Championships.

3. Annika Urban, Junior, Emory (+1 / 4)

Emory standout Annika Urban might be the most underrated runner in recent history.

We just keep forgetting just how fast she is.

And every weekend, she reminds us.

Urban dropped the field almost instantly the other weekend at the UAA XC Championships. Within the first mile, she already established a lead and it only got bigger as the race continued. Her time of 21:14 is crazy fast, but what’s even crazier is that she won one of the deeper conference meets by 30 seconds.

Including Urban, there were five TSR-ranked women in that UAA field. Adding in our "Just Missed" and "Honorable Mentions" names brings that total to seven women. Simply put, this was one dominant performance by Urban.

The Emory ace will take her unbeaten streak into the South Regional XC Championships where her chances of continuing that streak remain high. But we are currently on the edge of our seats awaiting the battle between Urban, Mayfield, Smith and Parker on the national stage.

2. Fiona Smith, Junior, Saint Benedicts (0 / 2)

Fiona Smith has been on a tear this season. Her only loss in D3 comes against Kassie Parker at the D3 Pre-Nationals meet. She has also been beating her opponents by an average of 56 seconds.

The only woman who has been close to her this fall is our TSR #3 runner, Clara Mayfield. But each time that those two women have faced off against each other, the MIAC XC Championships and Hamline Invitational, Smith has come out on top by 28 seconds.

The two distance stars will go head-to-head once more at the North Regional XC Championships this weekend, but both women will likely use that race as a national meet tune-up. That’s where Smith will hope to get her revenge on Parker, although that will be no easy feat and truthfully, not the stage where it needs to happen.

We’ve learned this season that Smith races with no fear. She consistently runs with confidence and she shows that by gapping fields immediately. She’s not afraid of a fast race, which is something that, as fans, we love to see.

1. Kassie Parker, Senior, Loras (0 / 1)

Kassie Parker is our hard-stuck TSR #1 runner in D3 this year. Many of us didn’t expect to see her stay in D3 this fall, but we are lucky that she did.

Her race at the American Rivers conference meet was bananas.

20:50?

Are you kidding me?

Parker has run that fast at that meet in the past, so it’s possible that it’s just a fast course. And while that may be true, we do know that Kassie Parker is extremely talented.

We are looking forward to her battle with Smith in the coming weeks. We saw Parker win by 30 seconds at the D3 Pre-National meet, but something tells us that Smith will not let Parker simply run away this time.

Of course, as the reigning national champion, we don't see Parker losing until further notice.