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TSR's 2024 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Team Rankings (Women): #16 Arkansas Razorbacks
- Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
- Aug 17, 2024
- 6 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 certain occasions, we are referencing TFFRS in order to talk about returners and athletes who are out of eligibility.
In the fall of 2019, the Arkansas women delivered on preseason expectations and secured a national title victory in somewhat dominant fashion. A complete and balanced top-five made the Razorbacks nearly invincible to every other lineup combination that their opposition could craft.
However, that fall campaign felt like it was "all or nothing" given how many top-tier veterans that group would lose to expired eligibility / graduation. And while they did win gold, the rebuild to get back to that level has admittedly stalled a bit.
Since then, Arkansas has continued to invest in upper-echelon individuals while boasting top-heavy scoring lineups which have featured a few focal veterans. In 2024, we're expecting to see yet another firepower-heavy lineup from Arkansas which will continue to be in search of greater depth in order to truly maximize their team's potential.
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Last year, the Arkansas women began their season at the Chile Pepper XC Festival, a home invitational which allowed the Razorbacks to shake off some rust. And typically, that meet doesn't usually tell us much about Arkansas' personnel.
However, we were able to see Paityn Noe race that day, a superstar recruit from the high school ranks. On that early-season stage, the rookie showed tremendous promise, earning an overwhelmingly dominant win over her teammates.
Of course, the first true test of this team's fitness wouldn't come until Pre-Nationals, a meet which featured other heavy-hitters such as BYU, Oregon, Virginia and Tennessee.
In her first real challenge, Noe was exceptional, thriving with a pack of highly accomplished women en route to a crucial 3rd place finish. That was a massive statement performance which firmly gave the Arkansas women yet another new low-stick to lean on and rally around.
Not far behind in 6th place was Sydney Thorvaldson, the team's secondary low-stick who gave her team a lethal 1-2 punch that was only matched by BYU. From there, Mia Cochran was a bit further back in 15th place, although that was still a very respectable effort which provided very solid scoring value.
The challenge, however, is that Arkansas then began to see significant lineup gaps form after their top-three. Laura Taborda settled for a 27th place finish while Mary Ellen Eudaly took 40th place to close out the scoring.
Now, in fairness, those efforts weren't necessarily poor. In fact, they were respectable. The Razorbacks were almost certainly not going to be competitive with BYU and they still beat a strong trio of teams in Virginia, Oregon and Tennessee in the process.
For the most part, Pre-Nationals was a success.
The next stop on Arkansas' schedule was the SEC XC Championships, a field that very closely mimicked what the Razorbacks saw at Pre-Nationals: an overwhelming favorite (Florida) and a bunch of nationally competitive, but beatable, teams (Tennessee, Alabama and Ole Miss).
Once there, Arkansas' Paityn Noe and Sydney Thorvaldson took 5th and 6th place, a fairly unsurprising pair of results given what they had done a couple weeks beforehand. However, instead of Mia Cochran emerging as the team's third scorer, it was Laura Taborda who stepped up in a huge way to place 12th overall!
With Cochran snagging 16th and Eudaly closing out the scoring in 20th place, the Razorbacks had a far more complete scoring group than their last outing. Sure, it wasn't enough to take down Florida, but falling 10 points shy of a team that we thought could make the podium and finishing 2nd overall was outstanding.
After cruising through the South Central regional meet, the Razorbacks toed the line for the NCAA XC Championships for a performance that would potentially rival their conference meet effort.
In her season finale, Thorvaldson had the race of her life, posting a monster 11th place finish to give her team a lethal low-stick scorer. That result was crucial as Noe struggled just a bit in her national meet appearance, fading to 101st place.
However, sandwiched between Thorvaldson and Noe were Taborda (84th) and Cochran (96th). Those results may not have jumped off the page at first glance, but with a superstar low-stick result and four women in the top-101 places, the Arkansas women looked as dangerous as they had been in a while. Eudaly would close out the scoring with a respectable 131st place finish.
That, ladies and gentlemen, resulted in an applause-worthy 9th place result at the NCAA XC Championships.
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Trying to gauge this Arkansas team going into 2024 is a bit challenging, mainly because there are two very different ways that we can talk about this team.
On one hand, the Razorbacks return a very strong core in Sydney Thorvaldson, Paityn Noe and Mia Cochran. The former two are All-American low-stick favorites for this fall while Cochran has proven to be one of the better middle-lineup scorers in the NCAA (among the non-podium teams).
That three-headed scoring group will almost certainly make Arkansas a nationally competitive team yet again in 2024. Not only that, but Noe will almost certainly be better at this year's national meet than she was last fall. And if she had placed 30th overall at last year's NCAA XC Championships, then the Razorbacks would have jumped to 6th place in the team standings rather than placed 9th.
Through three runners, the women of Fayetteville look to be a great spot.
But after those three? Well, that's where things get tricky.
Really tricky.
Laura Taborda has finished her eligibility and is no longer with the team. She was excellent for Arkansas last fall, providing a pleasantly surprising amount of scoring stability. Her experience shined through in the postseason and she gave the Razorbacks an identity centered around the team's top-four rather than their top-three.
Not having Taborda is going to hit a bit harder than some people may realize. Without her, last year's scoring group would have seen some pretty significant drop-offs within their top-five. That, in turn, would have limited the success that Arkansas had last fall.
Of course, Taborda is far from the only departure.
Mary Ellen Eudaly may have been a bit further off from the Razorbacks' main pack last fall, but she was still fairly clutch fifth scorer who closed out the team's top-five relatively quickly. Her 20th place finish at the SEC XC Championships was incredibly clutch and she ensured that her team was able to capitalize on the low-stick scoring that was in front of her.
However, Eudaly has since transferred to Virginia, leaving the Razorbacks with even lesser depth and less stability than if Taborda had just departed.
Oh, and the two other women who made up the sixth and seventh spots in Arkansas' lineup at last year's national meet? Well, those two runners were Heidi Nielson and Nyah Hernandez and they have both transferred out of the program as well.
In other words, the Arkansas women only have their main three runners from last year's lineup...and that's it.
Depth is going to a fairly significant issue for this team in 2024. While the Thorvaldson-Noe-Cochran trio looks formidable, they can't carry the scoring entirely on their own. And if one of those women were to be sidelined with an illness or injury, then there are going to be some fairly significant challenges to overcome.
If you look at the Razorbacks' efforts on the track, the only potential name who we could see truly impacting this team's top-five is Mackenzie Rogers. She ran 10:15 in the steeplechase this past spring, a very respectable mark for someone who just needs to be good enough for this team to by.
Veteran Tianna LoStracco, who is mainly a miler, could potentially return this fall, but her cross country performances haven't necessarily been awe-inspiring. Anastacia Gonzales is a 4:36 miler, but she didn't have the greatest spring campaign and is very clearly a middle distance runner with very limited cross country experience.
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None of this is to say that Arkansas can't/won't find scoring reinforcements for later this fall. But simply put, we just have no idea what four of their top-seven will look like. And for that reason, we have to bring this team back in our rankings despite last year's postseason success.
Even so, despite their scarce depth, no one should be taking this team lightly. They are a historical powerhouse that still has an experienced and accomplished "Big Three" capable of carrying the bulk of a team's scoring value.
That alone could keep this team in the top-20.
