.png)
TSR's 2023 Preseason D2 XC Top 10 Rankings (Women): #6 Cedarville Yellow Jackets
- Marissa Kuik
- Sep 9, 2023
- 6 min read
Written by Marissa Kuik, edits & additional commentary by Gavin Struve & Garrett Zatlin
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.
In recent years, the biggest strength of the Cedarville women that we have observed is their ability to run as a pack. This team typically doesn't necessarily lean heavily on the success of one runner, but rather a top-five scoring spread that they aim to keep as tight as possible.
Cedarville is a deep team, but like we mentioned, they are heavily reliant on depth, making it pertinent for the Yellow Jackets to have everyone racing at their best. And recently, that has happened more often than not.
This was a top-10 team at last year's national meet even without a clear-cut low-stick. And while Cedarville does not return everyone from their 2022 high-achieving group, they have enough talent and depth coming back to remain one of the nation’s better teams.
In fact, we suspect that they may be even better in 2023 compared to last year.
* * *
The Cedarville women opened up their 2022 cross country season with a fairly competitive meet, the All-Ohio XC Championships. And yet, despite some respectable teams being entered in the field, they still easily took home the title.
That day, we saw Alayna Ackley, Savannah Ackley, Hannah Rhem and Bethany Sholl sweep the top-four spots while Naomi Herman and Remington Hobson finished 7th and 8th, respectively. In typical Yellow Jackets fashion, their squad ran a tight-knit race, showcasing an exceptionally high floor.
After opening up their season, Cedarville took on an even bigger challenge by competing in the Louisville Classic. There, they finished 10th overall in the "Gold" race against Division One competition. It wasn't a perfect result, but it was still a team effort that demanded respect.
Once again, the ‘Jackets raced in tight packs with Alayna Ackley crossing the line in 57th place while Savannah Ackley and Rhem were not too far behind in 62nd and 70th place, respectively. Rounding out the top-five were Herman in 84th and Hobson in 93rd.
Even without a defined low-stick headlining their squad, Cedarville showed their ability to compete with top schools because of how closely together their scoring group finished relative to their competition.
That became a theme throughout the season, as did the need for a true scoring ace who could help the Yellow Jackets match their upper-tier opponents.
Surprisingly, this team chose to tackle a busy racing schedule, competing two more times after the Louisville Classic before the championship season even started. They raced in the Lucian Rosa Invitational in Wisconsin and at the UAH D2 Showcase in Alabama.
Even so, Cedarville succeeded and continued to prove their ability to compete with anyone. The Yellow Jackets followed the same strategy for both meets, placing their whole top-seven among the top-20 individuals at the Lucian Rosa Invite and the top-15 at the UAH D2 Showcase. They won both meets, further flexing their ability to be consistently be nationally competitive.
Even after all of that racing and traveling, the Yellow Jackets competed well at the G-MAC XC Championships. With a near-perfect score of 20 points, the team won the conference title while Savannah Ackley won the individual title. It was an especially dominant performance for the Yellow Jackets who seemed to have perfected the art of pack running.
Going into the Midwest Regional XC Championships, Cedarville had their hands full with the Grand Valley State women. The more dominant performance of the day did belong to the Lakers, but Cedarville still executed their race plan with few issues, finishing 2nd in their region with another top-notch spread.
To say that the Yellow Jackets stumbled a bit at the national meet seems harsh. However, compared to how consistent and dominant they were during the regular season, Cedarville did appear to falter just a bit in Seattle.
The team's top-three finished in their typical fashion with Savannah Ackley placing 41st, Rhem snagging 50th and Herman finishing in 57th place. On paper, we didn't see any surprises from this team through their first three scorers.
However, the rest of the Yellow Jackets’ top-five finished just a bit further back than expected with Sholl coming in 84th place and Alayna Ackley taking 93rd place. While no one in their top-five had a truly poor day, we felt like several of those women were capable of a bit more.
Even so, the Cedarville women finished their 2022 fall campaign by placing 7th overall at the NCAA XC Championships. In the eyes of most, that will still a relatively successful end to a season for a team that never showed any major lineup gaps last fall.
* * *
After this team finished as high as they did at the 2022 national meet, in what was arguably one of their lesser performances, expectations will be lofty for this squad yet again entering the fall of 2023.
The Yellow Jackets are coming into this season without two of their regular scorers from a year ago — Alayna Ackley and Bethany Sholl. We should also note that Remington Hobson is gone. And for a group that rallied around those women as reliable and highly effective scorers, trying to find suitable replacements for them this fall isn't going to be easy.
But while all three of those women played impactful roles in keeping Cedarville’s scoring spread so close throughout 2022, this team still has the opportunity to replicate (or build upon) last year’s momentum thanks to a large group of returners, many of whom saw leaps in their fitness on the track.
Savannah Ackley raced at both the indoor and outdoor national meets earlier this year and ran to PRs of 16:42 (5k) and 34:58 (10k). Those results suggest that she may be able to develop into the kind of consistent low-stick star that Cedarville never had last year.
And if that's the case, then she could soften the scoring loss of the team's departures (although certainly not all of them).
Helping to boost the middle of the lineup will be Hannah Rhem and Noami Herman. Neither woman raced much during the outdoor track season, but they both earned strong personal bests over 5000 meters this past winter, posting highly encouraging times of 16:55 and 16:56, respectively.
These two rising distance runners clearly have a similar fitness level and their indoor track campaigns were highly encouraging. Having middle-lineup contributors post sub-17:00 (5k) marks validate the scoring stability that we saw last year and may even signal further progression on the grass in 2023.
The biggest x-factor for the Yellow Jackets this fall figures to be a more proven middle distance runner — Audrianna Enns. She was consistently Cedarville's seventh runner last fall and was actually one of the better seventh runners of the entire 2022 NCAA XC Championships, placing 154th.
Enns, who was only a freshman a year ago, could be in for a considerable rise this season after running some impressive 800 meters times, closing out her outdoor track season with a 2:11 PR. If she can translate her middle distance fitness to the grass, then Enns may be the final piece for Cedarville as they attempt to close out their top-five and contend for a podium spot at the national meet.
Of course, they'll need to find a few more varsity contributors and replicate the development that we saw from this team last year. But we trust the pedigree that Coach Jeff Bolender has created in Cedarville, Ohio and we expect other women like second-year distance talent Aubrey Harrington to be ready for their opportunity.
* * *
The Yellow Jackets’ 2023 schedule is very similar to what we saw last year, featuring competitions like the All-Ohio XC Championships, the Louisville Classic and the UAH D2 Showcase. The team does look to have fewer races than last year which could be an effort to be sharper entering the postseason.
Their racing style figures to be very similar to last year and lends itself to a pretty high floor. Cedarville suffered greater losses than some of their competitors, but they return their top three women from much of last fall and a couple of other capable youngsters.
They have just as much upside, but perhaps a thinner margin for error compared to 2022.
If Savannah Ackley does step up to the challenge as a strong lead scorer, and we think that she will, then Cedarville could be even better than they were a year ago, boasting similar depth and a new element of firepower.
Only time will tell if that happens. But what we do know is that the Yellow Jackets will continue to utilize their pack-running style en route to strong results.
