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TSR's 2023 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Rankings (Women): #5 MIT Engineers
- Kevin Fischer
- Sep 10, 2023
- 6 min read
Written by Kevin Fischer, 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.
In last year’s D3 preseason team rankings, The Stride Report had the MIT women listed as an “Honorable Mention” squad.
We knew that the Engineers had the talent and potential to be in our top-10 following a couple of strong recruiting classes, but at that point in time, they didn’t have enough established names to merit a ranking.
After all, Izzi Gengaro had graduated, Olivia Rosenstein hadn’t raced since the fall of 2021 (following an All-American finish at the cross country national meet) and nobody else had recorded a top-100 finish on the national stage.
And yet, despite many question marks surrounding this team in the summer and early fall of 2022, they started to turn their potential into real results as soon as the season took off.
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The Engineers opened their season with a solid outing against some smaller Division One competition at the Dartmouth Maribel Sanchez Souther XC Invitational, falling to Dartmouth, but beating Brown, Vermont and Maine. The MIT women packed all five scorers in the top-15. It was a solid result, but we didn’t quite know how they would stack up against more even competition until the D3 National Preview at Olivet College.
At that meet, MIT showed out, finishing runner-up behind national title contender U. of Chicago and edging out a very solid UW-La Crosse squad.
Veterans Einat Gavish (6th) and Anna Haddad (9th) led the way with top-10 finishes, offering great firepower to help the Engineers get a scoring edge on the field. Gillian Roeder (22nd) and Christina Crow (28th) had solid outings as well, although Kirsi Rajagopal (41st) finished slightly further back than what was ideal.
Even so, MIT's September-time performances put them squarely on our radar as a top-10 team in the country, especially considering that they had achieved all of that without their low-stick ace, Olivia Rosenstein.
The regular season got even better for the Engineers two weeks later with a convincing win over St. Olaf, Amherst and Williams by almost a 50-point margin at the Connecticut College Invitational. Despite facing a loaded field, the Engineers packed four women — Gavish, Haddad, Christina Crow and Gillian Roeder — among the top-11 spots of the meet.
Kirsi Rajagopal closed out the scoring in 28th place, a fairly solid backend result compared to her race at the D3 National Preview.
An otherwise uneventful conference title saw Olivia Rosenstein finally make her return and join a team that was already thriving. However, it was clear that the 2021 standout was shaking off the rust after placing 13th overall. Roeder, however, was the MIT harrier who won the individual conference title.
After another comfortable win at the East Regional XC Championships, MIT advanced to the national meet with high expectations. In the eyes of some, they could threaten for the podium if they had a perfect day.
Rosenstein came through in a major way despite an abbreviated build-up, placing 12th overall to offer tremendous scoring potency. Meanwhile, Gavish joined her teammate as an All-American in 31st place. Freshman Kate Sanderson was a pleasant surprise as she snuck inside the top-50 to give this team some very solid middle-lineup stability. Haddad (84th) and Crow (98th), while a bit further back, still gave the Engineers five scorers in the top-100.
All of those performances added up to a 7th place finish that perhaps wasn’t on the higher end of MIT’s possible outcomes, but seemed pretty representative of their performance throughout the season. It also demonstrated that the doubts we had in August may not have been fully warranted.
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Losing Einat Gavish and Anna Haddad to graduation don’t help this team’s case for an improved 2023 fall campaign after a successful 2022 cross country season. Those were the Engineers’ top-two scorers at certain times (mainly during the regular season) last fall. Gavish in particular emerged as a steady and reliable low-stick who was so valuable for a team that was missing their projected top ace for a while.
And yet, despite those admittedly challenging departures, we still have reason to believe that MIT will be even better than they were last year.
If everything goes according to plan, Olivia Rosenstein, who is ranked at TSR #5 in our preseason individual top-20 rankings, should be leading the charge. She has had some availability challenges over the years, but it was extremely impressive to see her finish just outside of the top-10 at the cross country national meet in just her second race of last season.
Rosenstein has displayed an uncanny ability to flip the switch on her aerobic capacity very quickly. It's scary to think of what she can do with a full season’s build up.
Kate Sanderson will also play a key role for this team in 2023 as she just missed out on All-American placement last fall as a rookie. Since then, she has impressed us on the oval by running 16:56 over 5000 meters and qualifying for both the indoor and outdoor national meets.
This rising sophomore could be due for a big breakout year on the grass. Natural growth suggests that she'll take a step up in her fitness this fall which would be huge considering that Sanderson peaked perfectly for the postseason. Of course, we don't exactly know just how big that leap could/will be.
The Engineers also return another 16:56 (5k) runner in Kirsi Rajagopal who was not in the team's 2022 cross country national meet lineup. However, she was in (or around) MIT's top-seven for most of the season and even emerged as a backend scorer at times.
Despite having a quieter year on the grass in comparison to her teammates, there's actually a ton of reasons to be excited about what Rajagopal could bring to the table this fall. Her track success indicates that she has the potential to be noticeably better on the grass. She also has valuable experience racing in this team's varsity lineup and during the regular season, still posted some fairly respectable results.
As far as MIT's upside is concerned, Rajagopal could be x-factor who makes this team noticeably better in 2023.
Another interesting name to watch will be Gillian Roeder, a unique distance talent who holds exceptional upside. The MIT ace, who was an All-American in both the mile and the 1500 meters earlier this year, has some underrated cross country prowess as well.
You could look at her 177th place finish from the 2022 NCAA XC Championships and draw conclusions from that, but that would be unfair considering that prior to that result, she was the NEWMAC champion and the 4th place finisher at the East regional meet.
And after a pair of top-five finishes between the indoor and outdoor national meets, we expect her to be firing on all cylinders over the coming months.
It's not outside of the realm of possibility that all four of those women who I just mentioned finish their 2023 fall campaigns as All-Americans. In fact, we almost expect Roeder and Sanderson to be in that range after listing them both as “Honorable Mentions” in our preseason top-25 individual rankings.
And if that's the case, then the firepower of this team is almost overwhelming.
Beyond that quartet, there is a deep supporting cast throughout MIT's roster. Christina Crow and Lexi Fernandez, who ran 4:56 and 4:59 in the mile, respectively, will be looking to bring those improvements to the grass. Both runners appear to already have a strong base to build off of after Crow was a mainstay in the team's scoring lineup last fall while Fernandez found fast success as a freshman.
Archana Mohandas returns after finishing as the Engineers’ seventh runner in 2022 and Sarah Bentley made some serious strides on the track earlier this year, breaking the 10-minute mark over 3000 meters.
When you throw in incoming freshman Olivia Girand, who has run 10:34 over two miles, MIT looks to have a fairly large contingent of women who will be competing for the last three spots in their postseason lineup.
And when you step back to look at this squad on paper, they seem like they have one of the more complete lineups in the nation going into the fall of 2023.
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In a world where everyone stays healthy and just one person from MIT's extended group of backend lineup candidates has a breakthrough season, I don’t see why the Engineers can’t be dark horse contenders for the national title.
That would obviously be a massive task and would require a lot of things to go right, but as far as their ceiling is concerned, it’s not insane to imagine. Of course, we still need to see many of these women actually deliver on their suspected potential which is why we have them listed at TSR #5 in our preseason rankings.
But as things currently stand, we certainly see the MIT women improving on last year’s results and challenging for the podium.
