TSR's 2022 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Rankings (Women): #18 Colorado State Rams

Written by Maura Beattie, additional commentary and edits by Garrett Zatlin

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The women of Colorado State are a sneaky-good team.

While the Rams don't necessarily have a ton of star power or the allure of a Power Five status, the overall depth and the promising scoring potential of this team in 2022 looks very encouraging.

With five of their top-seven women returning from the 2021 fall season, the pieces are very much there for the Rams to get back to the "Big Dance" and make some noise while once they're there.

* * *

During the 2021 fall cross country season, Colorado State started out on a strong note when they recorded a 2nd place finish at the Dellinger Invite, a meet that was loaded with some excellent distance programs.

In the process, the Rams took down a top-ranked team in Arkansas as well as Portland, Oregon State and Oregon. The Utah women finished well ahead of them and everyone else in the field.

Colorado State put together an excellent scoring five which posted a respectable 25-second time-spread. In a field with two unattached runners in the top-10, top scorer Tomsula-Martin put together an outstanding 9th place finish while Laura Offerman and Annabel Stafford were close behind with 15th and 18th place finishes overall.

That top-three proved to be formidable, although the Rams bottom-two scorers settled for 29th and 32nd place finishes.

Even so, there was a lot to be happy about when looking at that race. Colorado State came away with a win over a Gear-less Arkansas team and they seemed to have a very strong nucleus of scorers.

That runner-up result would give the Rams tons of momentum heading into Nuttycombe just three weeks later -- and that is where this team really shined.

With Lily Tomasula-Martin leading the charge, Colorado State held their own at one of the nation’s biggest and best meets. The Rams put together a monumental 6th place team finish, highlighted by a 17-second top-five time-spread.

That impressive display of pack-running resulted in Tomasula-Martin finishing 35th, Lauren Offerman finishing 40th, Ashlyn Hillyard finishing 45th, Claudia Burgess finishing 56th and Annabel Stafford finishing 60th.

And of those five ladies just mentioned, only Offerman graduates.

Through two meets, it was hard not to like this group. They had displayed outstanding team-centric running, excellent depth and they fared well against highly-ranked competition. While their scoring potency and low-stick prowess had room for improvement, this team as a whole showed very few weaknesses.

At the Mountain West XC Championships, it wasn’t too surprising to see Tomasula-Martin near the front of the results, this time placing 8th overall behind a slew of New Mexico women.

And with finishes of 13-16-17-21 behind her, it was hard to see a difference in the structure of this lineup compared to what we had seen at the Dellinger Invite or at Nuttycombe.

However, instead of earning a 2nd place result, the Colorado State women settled for a 3rd place finish, sitting just two points shy of 2nd place Utah State in what we would have considered to be an upset at the time.

While none of Colorado State's and Utah State's scorers were separated by more than two points, it was the Aggies that simply got the edge in most of the head-to-head matchups.

Still, with a 6th place finish at Nuttycombe, the Rams earned plenty of Kolas points and eventually earned an at-large bid to the NCAA XC Championships after placing 4th in their region.

And on they reached Tallahassee, the Rams continued to thrive.

The duo of Tomasula-Martin and Stafford ended up securing a pair of top-100 finishes, although Tomasula-Martin would finish no higher than 88th place. From there, three women, Offerman, Hillyard and Burgess, were all within four-tenths of a second of each other, placing 128th, 130th and 131st, respectively.

Ultimately, a 17th place team finish was recorded. This was a very promising improvement from their showing at the 2021 NCAA Winter XC Championships performance where they placed 23rd overall.

When you looked at Colorado State's season as a whole, one had to consider it a great success. The Rams surpassed expectations and proved to be a team that wouldn't just rollover for their competition.

And with a good number of women returning in 2022, the Colorado State women have a chance to be even better than last year.

* * *

This team was fairly young last year as their 2021 national meet lineup saw five underclassmen toe the line.

Former assistant coach and newly-minted head coach Andrew Epperson has a solid front-runner in Tomasula-Martin, a potentially great secondary option in Stafford and a chase pack that has now gained valuable experience, proving that they can produce reliable results when it matters the most.

When comparing rosters from the past year, Laura Offerman is the only true graduate from CSU's lineup, although that's a much bigger loss than some may realize.

She was the team's second scorer at the Dellinger Invite, Nuttycombe Invite, the Mountain West XC Championships and the Mountain Regional XC Championships. She was also the team's third scorer at NCAA XC Championships.

Losing Offerman is far from ideal. She was a key scorer who brought stability to this lineup. And while this roster is very deep and very compact -- all of which theoretically minimizes her scoring loss -- trying to mimic (and make up for) her value on the grass is far easier said than done.

In fact, the task of replacing Offerman's cross country scoring will get even trickier when you remember that the Rams also lose a fringe top-five runner in Ivy Gonzales.

Gonzales was often the sixth or seventh runner for Colorado State last fall, but she still placed 82nd at Nuttycombe (the fourth-best sixth runner in the field) and was a top-20 finisher for the Rams at the Mountain West XC Championships (where she was a scorer).

On paper, Colorado State has enough depth to replace Offerman's scoring. It won't be perfect, but the transition from 2021 to 2022 could still be relatively smooth.

However, trying to replace Offerman with only in-house talent will be even more challenging with one less proven scoring option (Ivy Gonzales).

And yet, when looking at the potential of this team, the ceiling for this Colorado State squad seems to be far greater than their floor.

* * *

Lily Tomasula-Martin saw massive improvements from March of 2021 to November of 2021. The rising senior had two strong showings during the unprecedented winter cross country season, recording two 9th place finishes at larger meets, but struggling at the NCAA XC Championships where she finished 207th overall.

Since then, this veteran has capitalized on her newfound strength and confidence that she built over the course of last fall. Crossing the line in 35th place at Nuttycombe was a very promising result and it suggested that Tomasula-Martin was on the border of being a true low-stick. She later used that momentum to earn a top-10 finish at her conference meet.

The growth of Tomasula-Martin was apparent at the cross country national meet when she finished 88th in a deep field. The senior Ram is expected to lead her team once again this fall and could work her way into the top-50 of the national meet on a good day if she performs similarly to 2021.

But Tomasula-Martin is only as good as the rest of her team is. While she does have tons of room to grow, the collective whole of this team is what truly drives the Rams' success.

Annabel Stafford comes up next for Colorado State. She entered college during the pandemic, missing out on the 2020 fall cross country season. Luckily, she was able to get her feet wet in the racing scene during the winter months.

That year, Stafford posted respectable finishes, but she wasn’t quite hitting all of the marks necessary to make Colorado State's top-seven for the national meet.

However, the 2021 fall cross country season was a different story for the Ram.

At the larger meets, namely Nuttycombe, the Mountain Regional XC Championships and the NCAA XC Championships, Stafford was the fifth, third and second scorer, respectively, for the team.

Her 60th place finish at Nuttycombe gave us the impression that she was capable of top-half lineup finishes, but the Mountain West XC Championships were a little rocky for the rising sophomore as she faded to 10th on the Colorado State team.

Luckily, Stafford made up for that result by finishing 94th at the NCAA XC Championships, her first go-around at any national meet.

To see Stafford rebound from her conference performance at the national meet speaks volumes to her ceiling (and her resiliency) this upcoming fall. For the most part, she is a reliable athlete who can be closer to Tomasula-Martin than the rest of the scoring five when she's firing on all cylinders.

Stafford will need to channel her 2021 cross country success, as well as the endurance she built from the recent track seasons, to consistently place higher this year and maybe even act as a true low-stick. Recent personal bests of 16:04 (5k) and 33:25 (10k) complement the potential that we saw from her on the grass.

* * *

The rest of this team is very solid, consistently producing strong scoring marks, offering great depth and proving to be extremely reliable.

In other words, these next few women are the ones who make Colorado State a complete team.

Throughout last fall, Ashlyn Hillyard and Claudia Burgess developed into key top-five scorers for Colorado State. Those two women were consistently finishing near one another at the meets that mattered the most such as Nuttycombe, the Mountain West XC Championships, the Mountain regional meet and the cross country national meet.

The scoring duo would flip-flop who finished ahead of one another, but the difference between them was routinely less than nine seconds.

This teamwork by Hillyard, an upcoming junior, and Burgess, an upcoming senior, will be vital to the success of the Rams on the national scene. Keeping the scoring gap close between these two and the rest of their teammates is essentially what made the Rams have such an effective lineup last year.

And if this duo can replicate their 45th (Hillyard) and 56th (Burgess) place finishes from Nuttycombe more consistently, then this lineup will be noticeably better than last fall.

However, maybe more importantly, we'll see if Hillyard and Burgess can also drag a few fellow teammates such as Emily Chaston and Sarah Carter to stronger overall finishes. That may be an absolute necessity in order to offset the losses of both Offerman and Gonzales.

Last fall, Chaston was a dependable sixth or seventh runner as well as the occasional scorer. Over the course of the 2021 fall cross country season, the then-freshman held steady in the top-seven at all but Nuttycombe.

Her biggest performance came at the Mountain West XC Championship as she jumped to the third scoring spot on the team, finishing 17th overall.

But what we've seen from her on the track has arguably been more encouraging.

After an outdoor track season where we saw Chaston drop significant time in the steeplechase down to a personal best of 10:12, there’s a very real chance that she can close that gap between her and her teammates this fall, effectively squeezing into the team's top-five.

But even if that doesn't happen, then the reinforcements behind Chaston are plentiful.

Sarah Carter is a key name to watch this fall after not competing in 2021 due to an injury. The senior had a respectable cross country season during the winter of 2021, ending her season at the national meet. But since then, injury aside, she has excelled on the track.

With the chance to recover and train from March 2021 to January 2022, Carter recorded strong personal bests in the 3k (9:45), 5k (16:08) and 10k (33:44). Those marks don't necessarily blow you away, but seeing a backend contributor run 16:08 (5k) and 33:44 (10k) leads us to believe that she could be a scorer this fall if that talent translates to the grass.

Other names who we need to mention are Anna Petr, Lauren Neugeboren and Kylie Poole.

Petr saw highly promising growth on the oval this past year, specifically when she ran 4:42 (mile) and 16:14 (5k) -- two times that give her a nice combination of speed and strength this fall.

Neugeboren and Poole, meanwhile, were just seconds away from being in the team's top-seven last fall, but could be the first women called upon to fill in the gaps left behind by Offerman and Gonzales.

And let's not forget, Neugeboren even emerged as a sixth or seventh option for the Rams throughout last fall. She's already been knocking on the door of a varsity spot for a while now.

* * *

Colorado State might not be able to challenge for the win at larger meets given the talent of their competitors, but what they do have in their toolbox is a reliable front-runner in Lily Tomasula-Martin, a potential low-stick in Annabel Stafford, TONS of depth and numerous women who could translate their track success to the grass.

Admittedly, the up-front scoring of this team isn't quite as strong as a few other programs. There's also no guarantee that critical scorers will translate their track success to the grass. Replacing both Offerman and Gonzales will also be a much more challenging task than some may realize.

But at the end of the day, the upside and potential of this group far outweighs any cons. It is far more likely that the Rams emerge as a top-20 team in the country this fall than not, even if we don't fully know what their ceiling is.

And when you step back to fully analyze this team, there's a very good chance that we robbed them from a few additional spots in our rankings.