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TSR's 2023 Preseason D2 XC Top 10 Rankings (Women): #7 Colorado Christian Cougars
- Marissa Kuik
- Sep 8, 2023
- 5 min read
Written by Marissa Kuik, edits and additional commentary by Gavin Struve and 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.
The talent held by the Colorado Christian women is far greater than some might perceive it to be. This is a group that has quietly put together solid performance after solid performance. They have a balanced lineup and now, a valuable year of experience.
Let's not also not forget that the Cougars notched a top-10 performance in Seattle at the 2022 cross national country meet with a relatively young group.
A year later, the top scoring options on this roster should be measurably more experienced in addition to fielding loads of talent. After all, they return every single person from last year’s national meet lineup.
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Colorado Christian is known for racing sparingly throughout the season. Of their seven women who contested the cross country national meet, the majority of them raced just three times before that stage.
The first race for the Cougars last fall was a dual meet with Colorado at the CU Time Trial. Paige Tack led the team and held her own against the Division One athletes, placing 6th overall. The rest of the team quickly followed her with Zanzie Demco, Lucy Pidek, Michelle Kuipers and Elizabeth Mattson placing 13th, 14th, 15th and 17th, respectively.
For the most part, CCU finished close together and ran in large packs, something that is to be expected at a dual meet. Nevertheless, their early-season rust-buster showed us that this squad could keep their composure against high-level competition.
However, the first race in which we got to truly see how this team fared against comparable competition was the Lewis Crossover. At that meet, the Cougars came away with the overall win, beating the likes of Minnesota-Duluth, Winona State and Saginaw Valley State.
Tack paved the way once again, placing 5th overall and emerging as a sneaky-good low-stick scorer. She would be the main rallying point for this team throughout the rest of the season. However, it was the introduction of Shannon King who finished 10th overall in the race that really helped the team thrive on a bigger stage.
The lineup was rounded out by Kuipers, Mattson and Demco placing 13th, 16th and 24th, respectively. And even while racing sparsely, Colorado Christian proved that they could handle tough competition while holding very few lineup flaws.
Coach Jon Poag is notorious for resting his top-seven during the RMAC XC Championships, so the next big meet for the Cougars was the South Central Regional XC Championships. However, on that stage, the Cougars (surprisingly) finished a disappointing 7th place overall.
It should be noted that Tack recorded a DNF, making the final result more understandable.
Despite the team being without a front-runner, the rest of this group ran in a tight pack, solidifying a good enough placement to nab an at-large bid for the national cross country meet. But admittedly, there was only so much that we could take away from a regional meet that mostly served the purpose of advancing this team to the next stage.
Luckily, the Cougars looked more like themselves at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships where they placed 10th overall on the biggest stage. But oddly enough, they did so without any All-Americans as a fairly tight scoring spread allowed CCU to finish fairly high up.
Tack placed 60th, Demco finished 69th, King came in at 84th, Mattson crossed the line in 94th and Kuipers rounded out the top-five in 108th. Sure, the team didn't have any standout performances, but they also didn't have any major lineup flaws, either.
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With everyone returning and with another year of experience under their respective belts, this team is more than capable of producing another top-10 finish on the national stage. Except this time, we think we could see a more impressive result.
The hardest part about placing the Cougars in our rankings is the lack of track results from their top-seven runners to show how much the team has improved. Tack only raced once throughout the track season, producing a 4:43 (1500) mark.
Seeing Tack put together a strong season on the oval would have validated her fitness and progression entering a fall in which she’s expected to be the low-stick for this team. Even so, considering her history on the grass, she clearly has the ability to fill that role.
Tack proved to be incredibly reliable as a lead scorer and very clearly has the potential to be an All-American. Frankly, it was a little surprising that she wasn't one last fall. But in 2023, we expect that to change.
Kuipers and King are also relative mysteries. Both have run well at the national level on the oval before — Kuipers earned All-American honors at the 2022 indoor national meet (800 meters) and King contested the steeplechase at the 2022 outdoor national meet.
Yet, both seemed to struggle during the 2023 track campaigns.
Admittedly, Kuipers was fairly inconsistent over the half-mile distance earlier this year. Meanwhile, King did not race during the outdoor track season and didn't have her best indoor track season.
Again, both of those women are dynamic competitors, so seeing them not do as well during the winter and spring was puzzling. But we also know these two returners have the talent to play pivotal roles for this cross country team. They were fairly consistent last fall and they haven't given us much reason to doubt their abilities on the grass.
Demco, the former UW-Oshkosh runner, definitely had the best track season for Colorado Christian, improving her times by a significant margin. In fact, she improved so much that she qualified for the outdoor national meet over 1500 meters. Demco also ran personal bests of 2:12 (800) and 4:24 (1500).
If she can translate her huge jump in fitness from the middle distances to the cross country course, Demco may be the final piece the Cougars need as they try to improve upon their 10th place finish during the 2022 season. And given how valuable she already was last fall, we think a noticeable improvement could be on the horizon for her.
However, if anyone is going to break into this varsity lineup and preventing it from looking the exact same as last year, it will likely be graduate senior Molly Miller after she ran 4:36 (1500) and 17:36 (5k) in the spring. Watch out for this rising talent over the next few months.
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The biggest concern for Colorado Christian entering this season is what kind of fitness level most of these women are in after not racing for much on the indoor and outdoor ovals (or at all). That, however, is a manageable aspect considering that the Cougars return the entirety of their lineup and most of these women are proven commodities on the grass.
Tack is a legitimate, upper-tier All-American talent as evidenced by a 19th place finish at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships when she was a freshman. Meanwhile, Demco, King, Mattson and Kuipers offer a stable of complementary scorers. They were all fairly reliable and together, they have limited excessive scoring. Pidek and Ketner are also returning as backend contributors after finishing in the top-160 on the national stage last fall.
If each of those individuals can run at or just above a level that they have reached before, then this could be one of the better teams in all of Division Two, perhaps even better than their TSR #7 preseason ranking.
Colorado Christian could be a major sleeper team this fall. They don’t have any headliners past Tack (at least for the moment), but they do return a veritable war chest of experience throughout their top-seven.
