.png)
TSR's 2023 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Rankings (Women): #6 Williams Ephs
- Gavin Struve
- Sep 9, 2023
- 7 min read
Written by Gavin Struve, edits and additional commentary by 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.
Williams enters this season with a ridiculous amount of firepower. In fact, the Ephs should have three top-half All-Americans if all goes to plan. That sounds like a team that is a lock for the podium, right?
Well, the real questions for this group begins after their talented troika.
Namely, Williams will have to replace legendary coach Peter Farwell who recently retired following two decades leading the Ephs’ women and four decades with the men. Fortunately, new head coach Dusty Lopez knows the program well, having been a multi-time All-American in Williamstown in the early aughts.
With a number of returnees, the Ephs have the formula for an improvement upon last year and a 15th-straight top-10 team finish on the national stage.
How much better than that they can be — and whether they can make a push for the podium — will depend on internal development and whether one or two women are able to bridge the gap towards their top-three scorers.
* * *
The Williams women started a busy 2022 fall campaign against mid-major Division One competition at the Siena XC Invitational.
And despite the talent in the field, the Ephs fared pretty well against their academically inclined northeast contemporaries. While their firepower wasn’t as strong as it had been in prior seasons, the combination of Molly Fitzgibbons (11th) and Alexandra Bettez (20th) still gave this team some valuable upfront scoring.
Plus, their depth was fairly solid as the next four Williams women finished in the top-55. That backend contingent featured Grace Kaercher (43rd), Lucy Gagnon (49th), Sophie Rosencrans (52nd) and Fiona Picone (55th).
All of that led to a 6th place team finish, just ahead of RPI. It was a solid outing, but there were far greater challenges ahead.
The Ephs then sent part of their varsity lineup to the Little Three XC Championships, but they couldn’t truly compete with Amherst without a full lineup. And even if they did have a full lineup, the Mammoths likely would have remained as the winners.
Sure enough, that was exactly what happened at their home meet, the Purple Valley XC Classic, as the Ephs once again fell to Amherst. But this time, Williams was fielding their full lineup. Molly Fitzgibbons and Genna Girard both landed in the backend of the top-five while their final three scorers (Kaercher, Ball and Picone) slipped inside the top-20, but weren't able to crack the top-15.
In a relatively small field, that lineup structure was ultimately not enough to match the Mammoths who fielded the overall individual winner, the 3rd place finisher and put all five scorers in the top-13.
Things wouldn't get much easier for the Ephs at their next national-caliber test. Despite Girard producing a fantastic runner-up finish at the Connecticut College Invitational, Williams was unable to get back to their winning ways.
Ball and Fitzgibbons joined their teammate in the top-15, but the final two scorers weren't able to crack the top-40, leaving a significant gap within the team's top-five. And in the end, that separation of scoring in Williams' top-five was enough to keep pace with the MIT women.
The Ephs also finished narrowly behind St. Olaf in a bit of foreshadowing result. And later that season, those same two teams would finish directly ahead of Williams (in that order) at the national meet.
However, Williams reversed course at the NESCAC XC Championships in what was arguably the team’s best performance of the season. Girard continued her momentum, placing 2nd, while Fitzgibbons and Ball were 5th and 6th, respectively. And with senior Alexandra Bettez stepping up and adding further lead scoring (8th), Williams had enough firepower to convincingly defeat Amherst for the conference title.
It was one of the more surprising D3 results of the entire season.
After again defeating the Mammoths and the Engineers at the Mideast Regional XC Championships, the Ephs took to the national stage, a setting where Williams has been comfortable and successful in for the past decade-and-a-half.
Fitzgibbons and Ball produced great All-American results, coming across the line in 18th and 26th place, respectively. Bettez produced a strong complementary result in 62nd. Girard, while far from her best, didn’t sink the ship with a 76th place finish. Even so, her result would be a great one as the Ephs still looked like one of the better teams through four runners.
However, with their fifth scorer coming across the line just barely inside the top-150, the firepower of this team's lineup could only do so much. In the end, all of those results added up to a 9th place finish, Williams’ "worst" result at the national meet since 2007.
* * *
Like virtually every team, Williams enters this season with good news and bad news. Fortunately for the Ephs, they seem to have far more of the former.
Williams brings back six of their seven runners from a lineup that placed 9th on the national stage last fall. And it’s not like they’re losing a low-stick star to transfer or graduation! In fact, the three women who were consistently the Ephs’ best runners last fall each return.
That is huge news for a team that leaned heavily on their firepower in 2022.
Even so, Alexandra Bettez’s departure due to graduation is a difficult loss to stomach. She ended up being the third Eph to cross the line at the national meet, producing a quasi-low-stick result, and she was a reliable middle-lineup scorer throughout the season.
Given how well she ran and the veteran presence that she brought to this team last fall, it’s hard to believe that Bettez only made her first appearance on the national stage last year.
With Bettez emerging as someone who could periodically close the gap between the two ends of this lineup, her loss makes it admittedly more difficult to project a quantum leap for the Williams women over the next few months.
That would be the aforementioned bad news.
The Ephs will need all of their low-sticks to be at their best on the biggest stage and likely have two more women emerge as top-100 runners if they are to match this preseason ranking in a couple months’ time.
* * *
Williams’ success starts with their "Big Three." We have each of Molly Fitzgibbons, Genna Girard and Ella Ball in the top-15 portion of our preseason individual top-20 rankings.
For Fitzgibbons and Ball, that’s where one would expect them to land after accounting for their finishes in (or near) that range at last year’s national meet. It also makes sense when you start factoring in displacement of the now-graduated runners from that field.
Fitzgibbons was steady last fall in what proved to be a breakout season which reached its peak on the national stage. However, perhaps we should have seen a major improvement coming given her success on the track in 2022. She enters her senior campaign positioned as this team’s likely lead runner.
Ball, meanwhile, raced at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships, placing 63rd as a freshman. That's why her top-30 result at last year's national meet was less of a surprise as it aligned with a solid year-over-year improvement.
This Williams junior was admittedly more up-and-down in comparison to her star teammates last fall, but came through when it mattered the most. She has now posted consecutive strong results at the NCAA XC Championships.
Ball was also a double All-American at the 2023 indoor national meet.
Girard, meanwhile, entered the postseason looking like she might actually be Williams’ top runner. And while she didn’t end up producing the All-American result that she was trending towards, we’re almost certain that a bounce-back campaign is in store.
After all, Girard landed in the top-five in every race that she contested last fall leading up the national meet. She was even better in 2021, producing a monumental 15th place finish at the cross country national meet.
After a runner-up result over 10,000 meters at the 2023 NCAA Outdoor Championships, we have precious few questions about Girard’s aerobic ability entering this fall. We expect that she may be the fittest that she’s ever been.
In fact, I would almost expect her to usurp Fitzgibbons if both are at their best.
* * *
Yes, their top-trio is lethal, but nearly as important to Williams’ prospects this fall will be the backend of their scoring lineup. This team can’t expect to contend for a top-five finish (or guarantee another top-10 national meet finish) if they doesn’t see improvements from their final two scorers in the coming months.
That’s true regardless of whether two women hold down those roles for the entire season or if a rotating cast fills them.
Fiona Picone was the fifth scorer for this team at the national meet last year as a freshman. Conventional wisdom would suggest that she’ll improve in her second year and could help measurably cut down that scoring gap.
The Ephs also have Lucy Gagnon and Grace Kaercher returning from last year’s lineup to provide depth. Both are more of middle distance runners, and one will likely need to make considerable aerobic gains to get to where Williams hopes they’ll be.
Even so, those women are highly experienced and they have made steady year-over-year progress when looking at the entirety of their cross country resumes. But how much better can this backend duo actually get in 2023?
Perhaps one or two of the six incoming freshmen can push them as backend contributors.
* * *
After last year’s finish at the NCAA XC Championships proved to be Williams’ worst in recent history (which is still a surprising stat), we expect a small improvement in 2023.
This team has been a picture of consistency at the highest level and we foresee the Ephs having one of the highest floors in Division Three regardless of their roster makeup and leadership. Their firepower is just too good to ignore.
That means that Williams should be stable throughout the regular season and quite likely won’t have the same issues against foes like Amherst and RPI this fall.
Yes, there are some questions about the backend of this lineup and whether Williams can close out their scoring quick enough. Even so, the Ephs boast a level of roster continuity that few of their opponents hold entering this fall.
All of that makes us feel very confident that this preseason ranking will closely reflect Williams’ standing in the Division Three landscape over the coming months.
