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TSR's 2024 Preseason D2 XC Top 25 Rankings: #15-11 (Women)
- Marissa Kuik
- Aug 2, 2024
- 5 min read
Written by Marissa Kuik, additional edits and commentary via Gavin Struve & Garrett Zatlin
15. Elena Carey, Senior, Adams State
While Elena Carey’s greatest strengths lie in the middle distance events, we foresee her making some waves this fall.
Carey has some fantastic personal bests of 4:21 (1500), 4:43 (mile) and 9:54 (steeple) -- the latter being an event she only ran once! But more important than those elite times, however, is the bronze-medal finish she earned in the mile at the 2024 indoor national meet and a 4th-place finish over 1500 meters at the 2024 outdoor national meet.
Clearly, Carey has the speed and poise to thrive on the national stage.
The rising Adams States star showed strength and endurance last cross country season as well. Her national meet showing of 60th place was respectable, but it didn't fully reflect what she is capable of. After all, she finished 12th at the 2024 RMAC XC Championships and then 9th at the South Central Regional XC Championships!
After showing championship poise and running a top-10 all-time steeplechase mark this year, Carey seems in line to blast her already-solid 2023 NCAA XC Championship effort out of the water this fall.
14. Morgan Hykes, Senior, Adams State
Despite being another Adams State ace who has shown great potential in the 3000-meter steeplechase, Morgan Hykes' portfolio is quite different than that of her above-listed teammate and classmate, Elena Carey.
For one, Hykes has finished as an All-American at every cross country national meet that she's contested. In her first national meet effort, at the 2021 NCAA XC Championships, she finished an incredible 15th place! She then placed 38th in 2022 and at last year’s cross country national meet, she came away with a 29th-place finish.
She also put together her best cross country regular season last fall, placing 10th at the RMAC XC Championships and 22nd at the Live in Lou XC Classic.
Hykes continued to impress on the track, contesting four distances through the two national meets thus far in 2024 and posting PRs of 4:26 (1500), 10:06 (steeple) and 9:17 (3k) in the new year. Although, she hasn't earned an All-American finish since last fall.
This Grizzly veteran is exceedingly battle-tested and traditionally shows up on the national stage, particularly during the fall. It feels like she has been around the Division Two world forever, but that's only because she has been at the top since she started out as a Grizzly.
If her regular season plays out like it did last fall -- and recent track PRs suggest she's in that kind of shape -- then we think Hykes will close her collegiate cross country career with something similar to her 2021 NCAA XC Championships effort.
13. Helen Braybrook, Senior, CSU-Pueblo
After leading her team to a fairly strong 11th-place finish at the 2023 cross country national meet, Helen Braybrook will not only look to improve upon her individual All-American placement of 24th place, but also to help her team continue to rise in the RMAC and national scene.
Known as a middle distance superstar with personal best times of 2:05 (800) and 4:20 (1500), we know that Braybrook is fast. We also know by now that she can compete in high-leverage situations, as can be attested to by her multiple All-American finishes between the grass and the track.
On top of her continued improvement in her specialty event, Braybrook has also continued to improve with each season she has run on the grass. Last fall, she placed 9th at the RMAC XC Championships after placing 29th on the conference stage a year prior (and then 23rd at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships).
While Braybrook redshirted both of her track seasons this year, we know that she is on pace to perform even better on the grass because of her efforts across the pond. She ran at multiple meets in Great Britain, finishing with a pair of 2:05 half-mile performances.
Yes, it's true, middle distance performances very rarely translate to the highest levels of cross country. But both Coach Matt Morris and Braybrook have proven multiple times that it can be done. That bodes quite well for one of the RMAC's most established postseason performers.
12. Jenna Ramsey-Rutledge, Rs. Senior, Colorado Mines
What an incredible cross country season it was for Jenna Ramsey-Rutledge last fall.
She finished within the top-20 of every race she ran in and was in the top-10 of many of those races. After finishing a solid, but shrug-inducing 11th place at the Lewis XC Crossover, Ramsey-Rutledge placed 7th at both the RMAC XC Championships and the South Central Regional XC Championships before coming away with an impressive 20th-place finish at the cross country national meet.
Her top-half All-American finish was quite the departure from her "DNF" at the 2021 cross country national meet or her failure to crack the top-100 in 2022.
The expectation now for Ramsey-Rutledge is to be the Orediggers' lead scorer -- and she definitely seems up for the challenge. She stayed fresh on the track with a 16:23 (5k) PR, a near All-American finish over that distance at the indoor national meet, and maybe most auspicious of all, she won an RMAC 10k title.
This Oredigger runner has always been a lethal talent, but seemed to find a new level of high-level consistency over the past academic year. Her team always finds a way to perform at their very best when the national meet comes around and Ramsey-Rutledge should be leading that charge in 2024.
With tons of experience, plenty of success in nationally competitive meets and sustained peak levels of fitness, it's hard to truly find a flaw on the resume of this Colorado Mines talent.
11. Leah Taylor, Senior, Western Colorado
Ever since earning bronze over 1500 meters at the 2023 outdoor national meet, Leah Taylor has been an always-present name in our rankings.
After that impressive 2023 track campaign, Taylor went on to finish a brilliant 13th place at the 2023 cross country national meet. In her lead up to the NCAA XC Championships, this Mountaineer star seemingly got better over the course of the season. She peaked perfectly for the national meet after an 11th-place effort at the RMAC XC Championships that was solid, but didn't keep with the idea that she would end the fall as a top-15 name nationally.
That's ultimately why we didn't rank her higher than this -- we simply want to see her replicate that form throughout the entirety of the upcoming season.
Taylor continued to impress in 2024, running personal best after personal best on the track and taking away more All-American finishes at the indoor and outdoor national meets. She contested three events at the NCAA Indoor Championships, finishing as an All-American in the mile and the DMR and placing top-five over 1500 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Taylor may not be the most consistent name at the top of the sport (which isn't to say she's erratic), but it's hard to argue with the hot streak that she's been on over the past 15 months.
She finished the 2023-24 academic year with a 4:23 personal best in the metric mile as well as a 16:17 PR in the outdoor 5k. Both PRs show her depth and strength between both the middle and longer distance events. Those traits will serve her well going into another season with a fast national meet course as she aims to comfortably nab her fourth consecutive top-100 NCAA XC Championship finish.
