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TSR's 2024 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Team Rankings (Women): #17 California Baptist Lancers
- Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
- Aug 16, 2024
- 7 min read
NOTE: CBU's preseason ranking was based on the presumption that Greta Karinauskaite, Abir Reffas and maybe a few others would be returning. However, with the Lancers' 2024 cross country roster now published, it does not appear that those women are set to return. As such, we will adjust CBU's position in the first update of our team rankings during the season.
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.
We will admit, this ranking was initially supposed to be a touch higher for the California Baptist women. But after seeing the recent release of their 2024 cross country roster, we realized that this squad isn't going to look all too similar to what we saw from them last fall.
And truthfully, if we had known about these departures beforehand, we likely wouldn't have listed the Lancers at this position.
Even so, the fall of 2024 is all about new opportunities for growth. Under the new guidance of Coach Sean Smith (via Azusa Pacific), the Lancers should still have one great low-stick talent to rally around and there are multiple women on their roster who could potentially put together a passable scoring core by the time that the postseason rolls around.
* * *
The 2023 cross country season turned out to be a brilliant fall campaign for the California Baptist women. With a small handful of great low-sticks, a few breakout talents and solid depth, the Lancers emerged as a dangerous team at nearly every meet that they toed the line for.
The Griak Invitational, for instance, was an early-season battle against a large handful of squads that had some sneaky-good talent. And yet, despite having to face Utah, Colorado State, Portland, Boise State and New Mexico, it was the CBU women who emerged victorious...but only barely.
After a breakout season in the steeplechase, Greta Karinauskaite came through with a huge early-season win. That low-stick effort was beautifully complemented by the 6th place finish from Yasna Petrova. With Emilia Mikszuta locking down a 10th place effort, the Lancers were seemingly in a great position through three runners.
However, with the team's final two scorers fading to outside of the top-20, the door had been left open for another competitive team to sneak in for the win. That didn't happen, but it was certainly a close call as Utah settled for a runner-up finish, just one point behind CBU.
With a momentum-boosting early-season victory now under their belts, the Lancers would venture to Madison, Wisconsin to see how far their aerobic talent could take them in a loaded field. And despite competing in a very different setting (compared to the Griak Invitational), the California Baptist women continued to find success at the Nuttycombe Invitational.
There, the team's top scorer wasn't Greta Karinauskaite or Yasna Petrova. Instead, it was (former TSR writer) Grace McLaughlin who had an absolutely brilliant outing to place 29th overall. With Petrova (35th) continuing to find success in her own right, the California Baptist women were able to (mostly) counter the fact that Karinauskaite had an "off" day, fading to 52nd place overall.
Even so, with three women cracking the top-52 spots of the meet, the Lancers had plenty of firepower to prop them up as Emilia Mikszuta (75th) and Karin Gosek (134th) closed out the team's scoring. In the end, that gave the rising west coast distance power a highly promising 8th place finish at the NCAA's biggest non-national meet of the year.
Going into the postseason, the Lancers could do no wrong. They had secured a strong win at a nationally recognized invitational and they had thrived at the best cross country meet that anyone could enter (with the exception of the NCAA XC Championships).
However, the ladies of CBU would have a humbling moment at their conference meet, the WAC XC Championships. Despite the Utah Valley women showing tons of promise last fall, it was clear that the Lancers were favored to secure gold.
Or so we thought.
On that stage, the UVU women were excellent while the Lancers were truthfully underwhelming. The Wolverines had matched CBU throughout the latter-half of their scoring group and the Lancer's didn't stand out much after Karinauskaite (1st) and McLaughlin (3rd).
In turn, Utah Valley was given the conference title after defeating CBU by six points. It was arguably the biggest upset of the season up-and-to that point.
After qualifying for the national meet, there were still reasons to be encouraged by what this group could do in their season finale. They have found major success on a similar stage at the Nuttycombe Invite, were previously a top-10 team at one point and had put an odd "off" day behind them at the WAC XC Championships.
Unfortunately, the end result didn't quite match the expectations that we had for this group going into the national meet. Karinauskaite (17th) delivered on her full potential as a high-octane scorer while Petrova (45th) was within striking distance of a clutch All-American honor.
However, no one else on this team cracked the top-120. Grace McLaughlin didn't compete due to an injury and the gaps throughout the latter-half of the Lancers' scoring group felt significant. In the end, CBU secured a still respectable 17th place finish at the NCAA XC Championships.
* * *
To say that things have changed for this team going into the fall of 2024 would be a fairly significant understatement. In fact, almost none of what we saw from this group last year will look the same over the next few months.
Part of that is because Coach Adam Tribble left the Lancers earlier this summer to join the University of Georgia, his alumnus, to become the team's next head distance coach. That simple development sparked a handful of names entering the transfer portal, although not all of those women actually left or have (knowingly) transferred yet.
One name who is no longer listed on the team's roster is Greta Karinauskaite, the Lancers' superstar steeplechaser who was also an outstanding low-stick ace at the national meet last fall. Her departure is a crushing blow for a team that did rely (and was going to rely on) very heavily on her scoring value.
The CBU women no longer list Abir Reffas on their 2024 roster, either. That may not seem like a big deal when you review her 2023 fall campaign (179th at the national meet), but the Algerian distance talent just had a MASSIVE breakout season this past summer, running a jaw-dropping 5k PR of 15:25 (shoutout to one of our readers for pointing that out).
That was a stunning development that initially boosted this team quite a bit in our rankings.
Not having either of those two women was not something that we expected to happen to CBU as we were crafting these rankings. To be blunt, those exits from the program hurt this team quite a bit, enough so that we're not entirely sure if we would have even ranked them.
However, the departures from last year's team extends beyond the losses of both Karinauskaite and Reffas. That's because Emilia Mikszuta, Marina Trave, Maja Dzialoszewska and Grace McLaughlin are all gone. Some of those women were expected to leave, but others we weren't entirely sure.
We could try to go through each of those women and explain how their losses will alter this lineup. But at this point, that exercise would be pointless -- we're essentially talking about two different teams based on the personnel of this 2023 roster and the currently-listed 2024 roster. The lineup structure was going to change dramatically whether or not those latter four women stayed or left.
* * *
Now, thankfully, not all is lost for CBU in terms of scoring potential. The Lancers' 2024 roster does indicate that Yasna Petrova is back. That is huge for a team that will desperately need the scoring help. No one would have been surprised if she was an All-American last fall and even if her ceiling isn't quite as high as a few others, her reliability is exceptionally valuable.
Petrova is a the main catalyst who will at least give this team a chance to remain somewhat competitive despite their departures. She should be just as competitive as last year and maybe even more so now that she has experienced racing at an upper-echelon level.
Although, the rest of this team is...well, limited.
Lamiae Mamouni comes back with national meet experience, but she didn't fare well on that stage and wasn't necessarily an impact name last fall. Anna Lawrukajtis is a Polish distance talent who has run in the 9:30s for 3000 meters. There are also a large handful of women who have run in the 9:50s range for 3000 meters before.
Nausica Magnani may be the most important support name of all given that she's run 60:20 in the half-marathon. Magnani and Sini-Sofia Rajaniemi, a 10:35 steeplechaser, could provide decent scoring support as well. There are also a handful of respectable metric milers who could find success by stepping up in distance.
* * *
As we already mentioned multiple times before, we anticipated that Karinauskaite and Reffas would be joining Yasna Petrova for later this year. In theory, that gave this team a very formidable top-three that could at least get by with whatever support pieces the Lancers were able to muster behind them.
Obviously, that former train of thought is no longer valid. Instead, Petrova will be left to pick up the pieces while a large handful of international runners will be looking to have breakout seasons in order to close down on certain gaps.
There's also a possibility that new coach Sean Smith will make an adjustment to his roster with new additions in the near future. But until we see that, we'll prepare ourselves to correct CBU's ranking once the first update of our cross country team rankings take place later this fall.
