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TSR's 2024 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Team Rankings (Women): #22 Utah Valley Wolverines
- Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
- Aug 11, 2024
- 7 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.
The Utah Valley women boast a lineup that you wouldn't usually expect to find in our preseason team rankings.
The Wolverines come from a smaller mid-major conference, they aren't exactly recognized as a national power in cross country, they didn't pursue an especially challenging racing schedule last fall and they didn't have anyone who was an All-American last fall. In fact, they didn't have anyone who cracked the top-60 at last year's national meet.
And yet, despite all of that, the Utah Valley women feel like an incredibly safe team.
The Wolverines return all but one lineup runner from last fall. One woman in particular looks like she could be an All-American-caliber talent and last year's listed eligibility suggests that UVU still has plenty of upside that they can tap into.
By the time that November rolls around, we may be looking back at this preseason ranking of UVU and thinking, "We robbed them of a few spots."
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Admittedly, the Utah Valley women didn't venture to many meets last year that would be considered in the upper-tier of national competitiveness. That, in turn, made it a bit challenging to properly gauge just how good this team was in 2023.
The Paul Short Run, for instance, featured a large field of talented teams. However, compared to Joe Piane, the Virginia Invite and/or the Nuttycombe Invite, the Lehigh-hosted invitational wasn't quite at the same level.
That, of course, shouldn't take away from the tremendous win that the Utah Valley women earned on that stage. In central Pennsylvania, Morgan Nokes (4th) and Ari Trimble (6th) led the way with a pair of promising low-stick performances. Those potent scoring efforts were then complemented by quietly great finishes from Anna Martin (20th), Lydia Beus (23rd) and Abbie Fuhriman (24th).
In the end, Utah Valley snagged a surprisingly comfortable win, taking down Wake Forest by over 50 points as well as Boston U. and Penn State by even larger margins.
But if you thought that the Wolverines' win at Paul Short was impressive, then their effort at the Arturo Barrios Invitational likely blew you away.
In Texas, the UVU women once again flexed a lineup which featured a top-heavy scoring presence and a very quick close-out to their scoring group. Nokes (8th) was a great lead scorer once again while Beus (16th) had a surprisingly great day. And yet again, the backend portion of Utah Valley's scoring contingent held up incredibly well with Trimble (20th), Fuhriman (22nd) and Martin (31st) mostly building on their Paul Short success. Oakley Olson (32nd) was excellent scoring insurance even if her result wasn't needed.
Yet again, the Wolverines posted a sub-100 score, racking up just 97 points to easily trounce a UCLA squad that settled for runner-up via 188 points.
Were the UVU women looking strong during the regular season? Yes.
But were they challenged in any legitimate way? Truthfully, no. They were not.
That, of course, changed at the WAC XC Championships, a meet which would feature a head-to-head matchup against nationally ranked foe, California Baptist. And despite the promise shown by the Wolverines leading up to the postseason, the Lancers were the ones clearly favored to win the conference title.
Or at least, that's how it was supposed to go.
In what was one of the bigger outright upsets of the season up-and-to that point, Utah Valley emerged victorious by six points over a CBU team that, at one point, looked like a top-10 squad in the country.
In that race, UVU put their entire top-seven in the top-14. They took five of the top-10 spots and they put four women in the top-seven. And after the final scores were tallied, the Wolverines had pulled away from California Baptist by a somewhat convincing six-point margin.
After cruising through the Mountain regional meet, it was hard not to be high on Utah Valley. They had easily dominated two larger, nationally recognized invitationals and they took down a CBU team that had won the Griak Invitational and placed 8th at the Nuttycombe Invite. On a perfect day, it felt like UVU could be in contention for a top-15 spot in their season finale! That, however, was not the case.
Nokes (68th) had a great run at the NCAA XC Championships, giving her team a lead scorer to lean on. Abbie Fuhriman (123rd) and Ari Trimble (127th), while far from perfect, at least did enough to get by. You could argue the same about Anna Martin (147th). But with UVU's final scorer dropping to 172nd place, the Orem-based distance group had to settle for a slightly underwhelming 23rd place finish on the national stage.
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There is a very strong argument to be had that the Utah Valley women deserve a preseason ranking at a spot stronger than this. Their lone loss from their 2023 lineup was underclassman Lydia Beu and they took down an excellent CBU team last fall with a very similar lineup to what the Wolverines will likely field in 2024.
Morgan Nokes is someone who a lot of us at The Stride Report really like. She was a fairly consistent and stable lead scorer throughout last year. Sure, she wasn't necessarily a true low-stick (depending on what your definition is), but her ability to consistently thrive in larger fields that can often be overwhelming is something that should not be overlooked.
We also loved the moments of brilliance seen by Ari Trimble. Her 6th place finish at Paul Short paired with her excellent runner-up at the WAC XC Championships was enough evidence for us to say that, at her best, she can also be a lead scorer.
However, like many women not named Morgan Nokes, the scorers on this Utah Valley were a bit inconsistent at times last fall. That's not to say that these scorers had poor efforts every other outing, but certain races were better than others for certain Wolverines. Thankfully, if someone was only having a "just okay" race, then some other scorer usually stepped up.
One of those runners who occasionally stepped up was the now-departed Lydia Beu. She was the team's second scorer at the Arturo Barrios Invitational as well as the team's fourth and fifth scorers at their other meets.
Not having a rising sophomore like Beu is a slightly tougher hit than some people realize, although it's not necessarily devastating, either. Without her, Utah Valley would have tied with CBU at the WAC XC Championships, but would have still won on the tie-breaker. And without her at the national meet, UVU would have only faded from 23rd place to 25th place in the final standings.
Thankfully, Abbie Fuhriman and Anna Martin proved to be very steady and reliable throughout last fall. Their consistency as scorers is a great asset to have. There were also a few brief moments of promise from Oakley Olson. She was rarely a scorer for UVU last fall, but 32rd at the Arturo Barrios Invitational was a good representation of how valuable her scoring insurance was.
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Based just on their returners, Utah Valley has a chance to be a nationally ranked team once more in 2024. However, their rise to an even higher tier of national prominence will likely be dictated by their newcomers as well as the return of a key veteran who will now be fully healthy.
That latter name is Caila Odekirk, someone who has run as fast as 15:59 for 5000 meters. She struggled a bit last fall, but that was only because she was coming off of hip surgery. In the fall of 2022, Odekirk finished 154th at the cross country national meet, although you could argue that she'll be better than that (throughout the entirety of this fall) moving forward.
Not only that, but Utah Valley has also added two names from the transfer portal in Allie Warner and Julie Sumsion. The former name in particular is an especially crucial pickup, having run as fast as 10:10 in the 3000-meter steeplechase.
We will admit, Warner's cross country resume is fairly thin. She has never raced in the month of November and the few cross country meets that she has contested haven't been all that competitive. And yet, someone who has run 10:10 over the barriers and water pits should be considered when gauging who will be a scorer on this team.
Sure, neither Odekirk nor Warner are guaranteed to be as good on the grass as they are/have been on the track...but what if they are?
Heck, what if just one of them is?
It's hard to say exactly what kind of results we should/could expect from either of those women. But at the very least, the best version of those women can only make the Wolverines noticeably better. And in that scenario, our TSR #22 ranking may actually be too conservative for an otherwise proven team.
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If someone wanted to rank Utah Valley at a spot just inside of our top-20, then I don't think that we would argue. In fact, a few of our writers wanted to list UVU at a spot even more generous than this.
And frankly, I don't blame them.
From a talent standpoint, this team should, in theory, be better than they were last year. The only reason why we opted to place the Wolverines at TSR #22 instead of a better spot was largely because other teams in their tier are also expected to make similar (and maybe even more significant) improvements.
Any teams that are dropping significantly from last year retain enough talent (or have a strong enough history) to keep a spot over UVU...at least in our eyes.
Even so, there isn't necessarily an obvious flaw or an insurmountable weakness that is plaguing this lineup.
The UVU women gained valuable experience last fall, they have a great leading scorer in Morgan Nokes, the core of their lineup is set to return, there are multiple avenues for this team to improve and their top-five should be able to close their team scoring just as quickly as they did last year.
Yes, it's true, we would have liked the Wolverines to face more significant competition than they did leading up to last year's national meet. However, with both the Griak Invitational and Pre-Nationals on tap for their 2024 schedule, Utah Valley is going to have multiple chances to remind everyone of just how dangerous they can be when they are firing on all cylinders.
