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TSR's 2023 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Rankings (Women): #22 Toledo Rockets
- Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
- Aug 12, 2023
- 7 min read
NOTE: Earlier this summer, The Stride Report reached out to nearly every team that was considered for a possible ranking this summer. While we did receive numerous responses and great clarity, we did not get a 100% response rate. On rare occasions, we are referencing TFFRS in order to talk about returners and athletes who are out of eligibility.
Last year, the Toledo women kicked-off our 2022 preseason team rankings at TSR #25. And throughout the fall months, the Rockets gave us a variety of results which made us question whether they were ranked too high or too low.
And truthfully, we're not sure if we ever got a good answer.
But as we enter the fall of 2023, the Rockets will be bringing back everyone. Natural growth, a year of valuable experience and a stabilizing lineup structure suggest that yet another promising fall campaign is on the horizon for this Toledo squad.
Of course, in order to understand where the Toledo women are going, we have to reflect on where they've been...
* * *
We were never able to truly gauge just how good the Toledo women were throughout the 2022 cross country season. Part of that can be attributed to their performance at the John McNichols Invite, a race which was essentially a battle between the Rockets and the Illinois women.
For the most part, the race was fairly straight forward. The Fighting Illin' were just the slightest bit better through each of their scoring spots compared to Toledo's women at each of their respective positions.
The Illinois women went 1-3-5-8-9 while the Toledo women went 2-4-6-7-10. That, in turn, forced the Rockets to settle for a runner-up finish, three points behind their BIG 10 opponent.
Even so, it was important not to look too deep into that result. The race was only 5000 meters long, it was still super early in the season and both Joy Chirchir and Faith Linga had the potential to be better.
Things began to (subtly) improve at the Joe Piane Invitational.
In South Bend, Indiana, we saw a slightly better version of the Rockets' distance group. Chirchir gave her team a massive scoring spark with a huge 11th place finish. That result would ultimately make up for the slight "off" day that Faith Linga had after she placed 43rd overall. Luckily, teammate Lou Trois was right behind her in 44th place.
But from there, Toledo's lineup saw a gap as the team's final two scorers wouldn't cross the line until 58th place and 60th place. That, in turn, sent the Rockets back in the team standings to a total of 212 points and 7th place overall. They were well off from 6th place Liberty, but were able to establish a comfortable gap over Oregon State.
The Toledo women weren't necessarily bad at the Joe Piane Invitational, but their first two efforts of the season did feel like missed opportunities to position themselves for an optimal Kolas scenario.
Luckily, they remedied that issue at the Nuttycombe Invitational.
In Madison, Wisconsin, it was the Toledo women who proved to be the biggest surprises of the meet -- and in a good way.
Joy Chirchir placed 35th overall, continuing to offer valuable low-stick scoring just like she had at the Joe Piane Invitational. We also saw Faith Linga put together a solid bounce-back performance by placing 70th overall.
But the real x-factor in Toledo's lineup was seeing Madeline Vining place 99th overall, giving the Rockets three women in the top-100, one of which was a low-stick. And on paper, that scoring combination worked out beautifully.
With Lou Trois (142nd) and Emily Vining (157th) closing out the team scoring relatively quickly, the Toledo women thrived. And as a result, we saw this Ohio-based distance program capture a fantastic 12th place finish at the biggest non-national meet of the season.
As long as Toledo didn't completely bomb at their regional meet, they would be venturing to Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. After cruising through the MAC XC Championships and the Great Lakes Regional XC Championships, Toledo found themselves on the national stage, ready to prove that their Nuttycombe result wasn't a fluke.
Unfortunately, that was not what we saw.
Instead, Toledo fell to 28th place overall.
Chirchir's 52nd place finish was respectable and Faith Linga's 127th place finish was at least passable. But for the most part, almost no one on this team had a good race. And when you step back to evaluate their season as a whole, you can now understand why it's so tricky to properly analyze this team going into 2023.
* * *
It's important to make a clarification about how TSR's perception of this Toledo team as we enter the fall months: Just because we don't know what to always expect from this group doesn't mean that we don't know what their lineup will look like or how they will score.
Instead, our biggest uncertainty with this team is their consistency -- we just have no idea what version of the Rockets we're going to see when they toe the line.
The good news for Toledo fans is that this group brings back everyone from their national meet lineup. No, not just their scorers, I mean all seven women. Based strictly on natural progression and other schools losing lineup contributors of their own, Toledo should have a decent shot to move up in our hierarchy of cross country teams.
Not only that, but Coach Andrea Grove-McDonough has also brought in a small handful of women who could at least bring slightly greater stability to this squad in 2023.
The focal low-sticks of this team are Joy Chirchir and Faith Linga, two women who are clearly incredibly talented, but have posted results which hold varying levels of scoring potency.
At the John McNichols Invite, this duo fell to a pair of Illinois women that, in retrospect, they should have beaten. But at the Joe Piane Invitational, Chirchir was fantastic while Linga left us wanting just the slightest bit more. This 1-2 punch would go on to produce strong results at Nuttycombe (relative to expectations), although their national meet efforts certainly could have been better.
The core of this team will continue to run through Chirchir and Linga. As long as they get by in the scoring, then the Rockets will at least have a chance to be competitive. However, maybe more importantly, it feels like there is a significant amount of room and upside for Linga to improve as a low-stick. A leap in her fitness could result in a nice chunk of points being taken off of Toledo's team score.
* * *
Alright, now for everyone else.
By simply returning their entire group from last year, as well as adding a couple of transfers, the lineup options for this crew are plentiful.
In our eyes, Lou Trois and Madeline Vining are the most likely women to snag the third and fourth scoring spots in this lineup. And for the most part, they already filled those roles throughout last fall.
Trois finished just inside the top-50 at the Joe Piane Invitational while Vining finished just inside the top-100 at the Nuttycombe Invite. In a world where those two women replicate those performances on a more consistent basis, then you could make the argument that the Rockets are closer to being a top-20 team this fall.
However, until we see that, we can only put so much emphasis on their potential scoring impact for the fall months. Luckily, Vining ran 9:16 for 3000 meters this past winter and Trouis ran a pleasantly surprising 4:37 mile PR on the indoor oval. As far as talent goes, these women can clearly be scorers for a nationally competitive team.
From there, we would prompt you to review the resume of Vilde Vage Henriksen, a veteran from Norway. This transfer from George Mason has quietly solid credentials, although she is largely at her best on the track.
Even so, a 10:13 steeplechase PR from the summer of 2021 suggests that Henriksen will at least have a shot to crack Toledo's top-five scoring group. That, however, hinges entirely on whether or not this incoming graduate transfer can replicate her fitness from two years ago -- and that's not a guarantee to happen.
However, it's possible that the more impactful transfer will be Laura Nicholson, a graduate transfer from Temple. No, she doesn't specialize in the longer distances like Henriksen, but she does have plenty of recent success over 1500 meters.
After running 4:15 for the metric mile this past spring, there's a chance that Nicholson will be able to improve upon her cross country performances. Sure, the grass isn't her primary terrain, but she did place 26th at the Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships last fall.
And if this former Temple runner can build upon that result, then she will, at the very least, be a nice backend contributor for a team that clearly needed more stability last fall.
From there, the lineup options for the Rockets get blurred. They have plenty of women who they can utilize this fall, but trying to figure out who those women will be is an entirely different task.
Runners such as Emily Vining, Julia Dames, McKinley Fielding and Bailey Ranta all made appearances in Toledo's top-seven at major meets last fall. Admittedly, none of those women had much of a team-altering impact in the Rockets' scoring, but a year of experience can only help this backend contingent going into 2023.
Other women such Alex Bauer, Karina James, Ella Kurto, Morgan Hicks and Lianna Surtz have also shown glimpses of promise and still hold plenty of youth-based upside. And truthfully, we probably robbed someone of a mention when it comes to women of that caliber with that kind of upside.
* * *
On paper, the Toledo women can be a top-20 team in the NCAA this fall. As far as their lineup structure is concerned, they have the nucleus of something special. They have a true low-stick, a second scorer who could be a low-stick, a solid pair of middle lineup contributors and numerous options, both young and old, to fill out the backend.
However, the only thing holding this team back in 2023 is consistency.
The Rockets should naturally get better by returning everyone and by building on their experience from last year. Even so, that theoretical progression will only matter so much if this team can't perform at their best throughout the entire season.
We'll need to see more results like they showed us from Nuttycombe rather than the national meet. But the difference between the Rockets and the other teams in this portion of our rankings is that the Toledo women have actually proven that they can be better than TSR #22 -- other teams only have speculation and projections to lean on.
And if this rising mid-major program can make the necessary tweaks, then it's going to be very hard to find any major flaws within their lineup this fall.
