TSR's 2022 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Rankings (Men): #4 Williams Ephs

Edits and additional commentary by Garrett Zatlin

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When it comes to Division Three distance running excellence, Williams is one of the most recognizable cross country programs in the NCAA.

Over the years, the Ephs coaching staff has been able to consistently produce numerous elite-level low-sticks, near-endless depth and they have often landed some of the best recruits in the nation.

In 2022, all of those things continue to be true. The Williams men are once again going to be a major national-caliber threat, and if everything goes perfectly, then they might as well be locks for the podium.

And a national team title? Well, that will be tricky to win, but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility, either.

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Serving as one of the premiere Division Three teams from the east coast, the Williams men steamrolled their path throughout the 2021 regular season.

In the early stages of last year's fall campaign, it was Elias Lindgren who took the reins as the Ephs’ top low-stick with perennial superstar Aidan Ryan having an uncharacteristically slow start to his season.

After taking wins at the Little Three Championship and the Purple Valley XC Invite, Lindgren was beginning to show his cards as another name worthy of being Williams’ true scoring ace.

In that latter meet, he took home the overall win while Ryan settled for 4th place overall. With the Ephs backend trio of John Lucey, Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos and Will Spollen going 7-8-9, the Williams men were able to fend off a top-tier MIT program (that was just three points them) for the overall win.

However, along with Lindgren’s budding growth as a true superstar also came the emergence of freshman Tuohy-Gaydos who was beginning to take on elite form. He practically tied Lindgren at the Little Three Championship and had jumped into a reliable scoring option for Williams right out of the gates.

And by the time the Connecticut College Invitational rolled around, and with the opportunity to compete against a top-tier MIT program once more, there were no remaining qualms about Aidan Ryan’s fitness.

He completely obliterated that field by 46 seconds, destroying many All-Americans in his path, truly performing at the level that we had expected him to.

On the team side of things, Williams once again took home the win over MIT, winning 37 points to 43 points in yet another tight battle. Lindgren (3rd) and Tuohy-Gaydos (9th) continued to thrive in their respective scoring roles while fellow teammates Lucey and Spollen were right behind Tuohy-Gaydos in 11th and 13th place, respectively.

Together, those five men gave the Ephs a potent scoring group behind their superstar ace. Their combination of talent was simply too much for a top-heavy MIT team to overcome.

The NESCAC XC Championships were, as expected, won by Williams, but they were given a legitimate scare by Middlebury, a program that is good in their own right, but not to Williams’ level in terms of potential scoring.

And while there's no question that Aidan Ryan's DNF result certainly hurt, we also couldn't look past the fact that the Ephs scoring lineup just seemed a little farther back in the results than where one might have expected them to be.

This time, Lindgren settled for a 3rd place finish, although Tuohy-Gaydos rallied to have his best performance of the season (at the time) with a 4th place result. Meanwhile, Spollen and Lucey recorded solid, but also modest, 12th and 13th place finishes, respectively. Rookie Charles Namiot closed out the scoring quick enough (in 19th place) to give the Williams men their conference title.

Luckily for the Ephs, the Mideast Regional XC Championships went better. The trio of Ryan, Lindgren and Tuohy-Gaydos earned a 1-2-3 sweep in dominant fashion. Spollen was a respectable fourth scorer in 18th place, but Lucey did not start the race. That, in turn, left a bit of a hole for the team's final scorer, Nate Lentz, who finished 30th overall.

Still, with firepower that was simply superior to what the Middlebury men had, the Ephs were able to take home their regional title with 54 points. And yet, despite their season-long success, it felt like the entirety of this Williams' lineup had not all run well on the same day.

And then came the NCAA XC Championships, Williams' season finale which was almost a completely perfect day for the Ephs. Why was it almost a perfect day?

Well, there were a few reasons...

• Elias Lindgren, not Aidan Ryan, nearly had the individual title won with 200 meters remaining, if not for an other-worldly Alex Phillip kick.

• Aidan Ryan ended placing 4th overall, which was not at all a disappointment, but he wasn’t in contention for the individual title as one might have expected.

• Tuohy-Gaydos stepped up in a HUGE way, placing 19th overall and solidifying himself as the top true freshman in Division Three.

• Will Spollen and Charles Naimot rounded out the Ephs scoring action, placing 87th and 91st, respectively, getting the job done for the Ephs, but maybe leaving a few points on the table.

• John Lucey made a heroic run through the majority of the race in All-American position, but ultimately faded to the back of the field.

Williams would ultimately finish 3rd overall at the NCAA XC Championships, falling behind Pomona-Pitzer as well as MIT and scoring 167 points in the process.

If everything went right, could they have won the title?

Maybe not, that would have been highly unlikely. But if everything went right, they might have taken 2nd place overall...although even that wasn't a guarantee.

And yet, even with a few ups and downs, this team had their best race of the season when it mattered the most and they did more than enough to emerge as a podium team yet again.

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The departure of Aidan Ryan, one of the most decorated distance runners in Division Three history, is certainly a brutal big loss for the Ephs.

The current graduate transfer at the University of Washington not only provided the Williams men with some of the best low-stick scoring in the NCAA, but he was the face of this program for the last few years.

Losing that kind of leadership and experience is not great.

But for as damaging as that departures may be, this is still a roster that returns four of their top-five runners from the 2021 national meet. That, in turn, puts the Ephs in prime position to contend for yet another podium finish come November.

The elite scoring duo of Elias Lindgren and Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos further evolved as superstars during the indoor and outdoor track seasons, racking up numerous All-American finishes on the track and establishing themselves as one of the prime duos in Division Three.

We could go on and on about Lindgren and Tuohy-Gaydos, but there is admittedly not a ton of additional scoring that either man can offer in 2022 compared to 2021. There's a realistic chance that Tuohy-Gaydos makes the jump into being a title contender, but even if this duo goes 1-2 at this year's national meet, then they'd only be improving their team score by 20 points.

And based on last year's results, that's not necessarily going to change the dynamic of who the title and podium contenders are in 2022.

Instead, the real upside within this team will come from their backend scorers.

Will Spollen, as we have already detailed, was fantastic last year. 12th at both the Connecticut College Invite and the NESCAC XC Championships led to an 87th place finish that likely could have been top-70 on the right day.

However, maybe more importantly, Spollen ran 14:39 for 5000 meters this past spring, a time that has prompted to ask...could this guy be an All-American by season's end?

Charles Naimot took to the longer distances on the oval earlier this year, running an impressive mark of 30:13 for 10,000 meters, just on the cusp of making the outdoor national meet as a freshman.

We're really big fans of Naimot this year. Despite his inexperience, he stepped up and contributed valuable scoring for the Ephs last fall. The fact that he continued to improve on the track earlier this year suggests that he's still getting better and better.

We could absolutely see Naimot being an All-American this fall, especially if he follows the trajectory that we've seen from him over the last year or so.

We also have to mention Nate Lentz, the Ephs' sixth runner from the 2021 cross country national meet. Although he occasionally emerged as a backend scorer when called upon, it's his success on the track this past year that really captures our attention.

Lentz ran personal bests of 1:54 in the 800 meters and 3:49 in the 1500 meters, showing some exemplary range in addition to his cross country resume.

Williams just needs Lentz to be a reliable fourth or fifth scorer this fall, and we think a 3:49 (1500) runner can absolutely deliver on that expectation.

And how about John Lucey? He was able to attack his personal bests on the track as well, running 3:55 in the 1500 meters and 14:46 for 5000 meters earlier this year.

While Lucey did falter (a lot) at the national meet, he was clearly putting himself in a position for a top finish about halfway through the race.

Not only that, but finishes of 11th at the Connecticut College Invite and 13th at the NESCAC XC Championships suggest that he can be, at minimum, a top-80 national meet finisher this fall.

Other names like Nikhil Denatale (9:02 for 3200 meters) and Ryan Hardiman (9:22 for 3200 meters) are high school recruits who could play major roles for this team in 2022. Let's not forget, this Williams program has had consistent and outstanding success with younger runners.

If one of those rookies is able to crack the varsity lineup in the next few weeks, then they may rise up Williams' depth chart.

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Despite the critical loss of Aidan Ryan, this Williams' team is in pretty good shape heading into the 2022 cross country season. With a breadth of depth returning to their team, it's hard to see this team falling too far from the heights that we saw them at last fall.

But who will step up into the open scoring spot? Who will be the final name to minimize the team's top-five time-spread? Will we see any of the new guys step up and contribute to the team's varsity efforts?

Spollen and Naimot finishing near the top-90 at the NCAA XC Championships last fall was a solid pair of performances to be Williams' fourth and fifth scorers. However, in order to make up for Ryan's scoring value, almost everyone in back-half of this lineup will need to be better.

Naimot’s growth in the track season would suggest that he could fill that open scoring role, but we wouldn’t count out Lucey, either. If these guys can be as close to Lindgren and Tuohy-Gaydos as possible, then Williams’ TSR #4 ranking might be an underrating by season’s end.