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TSR's 2022 Preseason D2 XC Top 25 Rankings: #5-1 (Men)
- John Cusick
- Aug 4, 2022
- 9 min read
Additional commentary and edits by Garrett Zatlin
5. Gidieon Kimutai, Rs. Junior, Missouri Southern
By reaching the top-five portion of our rankings, we find a familiar name and a long-time resident of Division Two in Gidieon Kimutai. He’s also the third Missouri Southern athlete who we have ranked in our top-10...and he’s arguably the best of that trio.
Kimutai returns this fall with extensive cross country experience, something we think will be extremely useful as the season progresses. Much like Chepkesir (TSR #6), we’ve also seen some incredible consistency and high-octane performances from this Lion veteran since 2018.
During his freshman campaign, Kimutai's "worst" finish was a 15th place result at the Chile Pepper XC Festival. If you remove that performance, he was never worse than 4th. That 4th place finish came at the 2018 NCAA XC Championships after securing victories at the MIAA XC Championships and the Central Regional XC Championships.
And from there, Kimutai was seen as a D2 superstar throughout the country.
During his sophomore season, we saw Kimutai have the best string of results of anyone not named Ezra Mutai. He won the Lewis XC Crossover, taking down the likes of Tanner Chada, Titus Winders and CarLee Stimpfel in the process.
He then swept the MIAA XC Championships and the Central Regional XC Championships before finally finishing 5th at the 2019 NCAA XC Championships.
We’ve already said this, but that kind of consistency is impressive no matter the competition.
Coming into the 2022 spring season, it had been a full year since we had seen Kimutai race on the track. In fact, it's been even longer since he raced on the grass. 2019, after all, was the last time he toed the line for a cross country race.
What we saw during this most recent outdoor track season isn’t necessarily who we think he will be on the grass. Kimutai has a 4th place finish to his name at the 2019 NCAA Indoor Championships and has set personal bests in the 1500 meters (3:49), the 3000 meters (8:12) and the 5000 meters (13:57) throughout 2021.
The only mark of his that isn’t on par with the rest of the men in our rankings is his 10k personal best of 30:17 which we’d argue isn’t indicative of the runner he actually is.
Kimutai has quietly proven to be a great tactical runner over the course of two extremely impressive cross country seasons. His success at such a young age signals that he should only get better with more experience.
His lack of racing on the grass isn't ideal, and that's why we haven't ranked him higher, but make no mistake, this is someone capable of contending for a national title on the right day.
4. Afewerki Zeru, Rs. Senior, UC-Colorado Springs
Afewerki Zeru finally had his breakthrough campaign during the 2021-2022 academic year and that’s exactly why he finds himself as our TSR #4 athlete in these rankings.
Zeru is fresh off of two track seasons where he torched his previous personal bests, running phenomenal times of 8:04 (3k), 13:44 (5k) and 28:56 (10k) during the winter and spring months. He capped off his outdoor track season at the NCAA Outdoor Championships with a 3rd place finish in the 10k and then a gold medal in the 5k, easily marking the spring of 2022 the best stretch of his career.
However, when you look at his 2021 results on the grass, it doesn’t come as much surprise that Zeru ran so well later in the year.
Last fall, after a couple of low-key victories, Zeru imposed his presence by finishing 2nd at the RMAC XC Championships behind Dillon Powell (who we'll get to in a moment). Two weeks later, he finished 2nd at the South Central XC Championships, again behind Powell.
Zeru then finished his 2021 cross country season with a strong 15th place finish at the NCAA XC Championships, marking his first All-American honor on the grass.
This is important because Zeru had a strong postseason run in 2019, but didn’t deliver on the national stage like we expected him to. He moved from 49th to 15th between the 2019 and 2021 cross country national meets and in theory, that progression points to him feeling more comfortable on the grass.
What we have seen from Zeru over the last year of racing includes improved tactics, faster times and highly impressive head-to-head victories against some of the best men in the country.
If he is able to put all of his greatest racing aspects together at the right time, then Zeru is going to be incredibly tough to beat.
3. Tanner Chada, Senior, Grand Valley State
Tanner Chada is the runner-up from the 2021 NCAA XC Championships and if it weren’t for two incredible performances from other individuals on the track, he’d be our top-ranked runner heading into this fall season.
When you look at the history of Chada racing on the grass, it’s not hard to see why he’s consistently been at the top of our rankings.
Chada has raced at the NCAA XC Championships three times in his career, finishing 21st (2018), 24th (2019) and then 2nd (2021).
You can pair those All-American results with his strong postseason racing where, in 2018, he finished 4th at the GLIAC XC Championships and 6th at the Midwest XC Championships.
In 2019, he won the GLIAC cross country title before finishing 3rd at the Midwest Regional XC Championships. In the fall of 2021, he finished 2nd at both of those meets prior to that aforementioned runner-up finish at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships.
If Chada's postseason success wasn’t enough to impress you, then his 2nd place finish at the MSU Spartan Invitational, where he lost only to Morgan Beadlescomb, should add to his lore. Two weeks after that performance, he placed 4th at the Louisville XC Classic in a very top-heavy race where we saw him only lose to Isaac Harding, Olin Hacker and Bob Liking, adding more fuel to the Chada hype train.
All of that experience is great when it comes to racing on the grass and when we combine that with what we’ve seen from Chada on the track, then we’ve got one of the best all-around athletes in the country.
Oh, and don't forget, Chada owns personal bests of 4:03 (mile), 7:56 (3k), 13:37 (5k) and 28:46 (10k) with the latter two coming this past outdoor season.
There has been an unreal amount of success for Chada since he first debuted for the Lakers back in 2018. While we’ve documented how well he has ran during the fall, we can’t forget how well he races on the big stage at any time of the year.
He was 3rd as just a freshman at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships in the 5k and since then, he has rattled off seven more All-American finishes from the 3k up to the 10k.
As Chada heads into his final cross country season for Grand Valley State, there’s a very real chance that he can finish as the top runner in the nation. We’ve seen a level-headedness from him at such a young age and he has only gained more experience since then.
Chada's times have dropped every single year and he hasn’t sacrificed his racing tactics in order to do so. He will stick his nose into every lead group and he has the necessary traits to withstand most tactics that are thrown at him.
There is no doubt in our minds that Chada is a top-five athlete heading into this cross country season and honestly, a TSR #3 ranking feels like a worst-case scenario for him. He has not given us a reason to believe that he’ll take a step back on the grass and if he does indeed take a step forward, then it’s going to take a perfect race plan to keep him off the top podium spot.
2. Awet Beraki, Junior, Adams State
Awet Beraki burst onto the D2 scene after transferring from Cloud County Community College to Adams State. In those few months donning the Adams’ green, he’s become one of the most lethal and overwhelmingly strong distance talents that Division Two has to offer.
For those unfamiliar with Beraki, he first made a name for himself over the past two years at Cloud County. In 2020, he finished 6th place at the NJCAA XC Championships just two weeks removed form winning the NJCAA Region VI XC Championships.
In 2021, he wound up finishing 12th at the NJCAA XC Championships. And while that was a lesser finish than his 2020 effort, Beraki made up for that just three days later.
At the NJCAA Half Marathon Championships, the former JUCO star finished 2nd place overall, running an extremely impressive time of 1:04:10 and finishing just seven seconds behind Iowa Central’s Aspel Kibrob while putting 39 seconds between him and the 3rd place finisher.
During that 2021 season, we saw Beraki finish 59th at the Chile Pepper XC Festival which by no means indicates the kind of runner that he is. He bounced back at the Fort Hays State Tiger Open where he finished 4th in the “Black” section – arguably the deeper of the two sections contested.
For reference, his time of 23:50 would have placed him 2nd in the “Gold” section behind only TSR #24 runner, Andrew Amor.
After transferring in December of 2021, Beraki ran excellent marks of 8:17 (3k) and 13:36 (5k) on the indoor oval. He finished 8th at the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 5k, forcing the rest of the country to take notice of what he was doing.
Then, Beraki toed the line for the outdoor track season.
And the results were incredible.
Beraki proceeded to run 28:12 (10k), the fastest time in Division Two this past spring, and 13:38 (5k), allowing him to qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Championships in both events.
This time, the Adams State star finished as the runner-up in both events, truly solidifying himself as a household superstar. Prior to Adams State, he had never run faster than 8:24 (3k), 14:38 (5k) and 30:05 (10k), making what he did in just under five months truly remarkable.
As we get ready for the 2022 cross country season, it’s hard to believe that Beraki won’t be just as good on the grass as he was on the track. His dramatic improvement in a short couple of months suggest that he’ll see that same kind of improvement while racing on the grass.
While Beraki’s cross country resume isn’t as strong as a few others, there are plenty of other things that warrant him being inside our top-five. We’ve already mentioned his dramatic drop in time, but his ability to execute in high-level race scenario is very underrated as well.
With another year of training within Adams State’s distance program, we should expect Beraki to play a massive role as they look for another team title. And while they’re looking for that team title, they may just come away with another individual champion in the process.
1. Dillon Powell, Junior, Colorado Mines
If you’ve been following along with our rankings, then at this point, you’ve probably figured out that Dillon Powell would be our TSR #1 runner. This decision doesn’t come lightly for us, but after long consideration, it would have been hard for us not to place him at our top spot.
We all know how Powell’s 2021 cross country ended, but it’s safe to say that he has rebounded nicely. What we saw during the winter and spring months matches what we saw from him prior to the NCAA XC Championships where he recorded a DNF result.
Powell started his 2021 cross country season with a victory at the Wyoming Invite against sparse competition before heading to Arkansas for the Chile Pepper XC Festival. Once he was there, Powell finished 3rd behind Zouhair Talbi and Myles Richter in a blistering time of 23:39, closing out his regular season of racing for the Orediggers.
Powell later won the RMAC XC Championships with a resounding 20-second victory over Afewerki Zeru (TSR #4). He then went on to dominate the South Central XC Championships, besting the rest of the field by 27 seconds.
Those two performances alone are good enough to tell us that Powell is one of the best in the country. But yes, we agree, there’s always a “what if” scenario when someone records a DNF result, leaving us to figure out what may have been.
Luckily, Powell showed us what might be in store for his 2022 fall campaign.
During the indoor track season, the Colorado Mines star recorded a jaw-dropping time of 13:33 to set the D2 collegiate record in the 5000 meters before going on to finish 2nd in the event at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Powell would later run 28:22 for 10,000 meters during the outdoor track season before taking home the title at the NCAA Outdoor Championships. That same weekend, he finished 3rd in the 5k behind only Zeru and Beraki.
We’ve talked plenty about Powell’s racing tactics in the past and how they’ll come into play again heading into the cross country season. However, while watching him race over the course of the winter and the spring, it appears that he’s dialed back his front-running tendencies until absolutely necessary.
This past spring, we saw Powell make a decisive move in the 10k to win his first NCAA title and if the same strategy is applied for his racing on the grass, then he’ll be incredibly hard to beat.
With improved tactics, Powell can take full advantage of his aerobic capacity, making him that much more challenging to handle for his competition.
While trying to take home a title on the grass, Powell will have to go through one of the most top-heavy fields that we can remember – but the field is also going to have to go through him, and that’s much easier said than done.
