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TSR's 2024 Preseason D2 XC Top 25 Rankings: #20-16 (Men)
- Gavin Struve
- Aug 1, 2024
- 5 min read
20. Koby Fraaza, Rs. Junior, Grand Valley State
Last fall was the season in which Koby Fraaza really began to show what made him a coveted in-state recruit in the Class of 2021.
While it was truthfully difficult to gauge a 15th-place effort at Michigan State or a 25th-place finish at Louisville, a top-five result at the GLIAC XC Championships suggested that Fraaza may be ready to knock down the All-American door. Sure enough, he did just that come November in Joplin, Missouri, placing 31st a year after finishing 70th at the NCAA XC Championships.
Fraaza wasn't able to return to the NCAA Championships on the track, but he won a couple of conference titles and posted competitive PRs of 8:03 (3k) and 13:56 (5k).
Given the improvement that we saw from Fraaza from the fall of 2022 to 2023, his further gains on the track in 2024, and the fact that he's now an experienced veteran, we don't see a valid argument as to why he shouldn't be ranked in our top-25 entering 2024.
Of course, that's not to say that it's a guarantee that Fraaza is a top-half All-American or even better his strong finish from the 2023 cross country national meet. We just feel that he is one of the safer picks to match or improve upon his postseason exploits a year later.
19. Cas Kopmels, Senior, Wingate
Despite being a proven postseason performer, Cas Kopmels is a relatively confounding name to rank. That's largely because he raced just twice last fall. And honestly, we didn't learn much from his 60th-place finish in the Paul Short "Gold" race.
Nevertheless, Kopmels came through when it counted, placing 26th at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships (after placing 27th in the same setting in 2022) to serve as the fourth scorer on Wingate's national title team.
Kopmels went on to run a 10,000-meter PR of 29:15 in the spring and contested that event at the NCAA Outdoor Championships where he finished a decent 17th place. Just two weeks before running that aforementioned personal best, this Bulldog star dropped a 1500-meter PR of 3:46! That's some pretty rare same-season versatility for a D2 athlete.
The largest gap on Kopmels' resume is his lack of racing in the lead-up to the cross country national meet last year. Of course, Wingate as a whole raced sparingly. Kopmels competed more often in 2022 en route to a similar finish to the fall.
The Bulldog veteran showed himself to be in top form throughout 2023-24 and there's no reason to think that will change this fall. After all, Kopmels has already shown that his baseline appears to be just a handful of spots below this placement.
18. Amos Pkiach, Senior, East Central
Amos Pkiach was one of several Kenyan stars to blossom for East Central last fall. But perhaps his emergence should have been less surprising considering that he was once competing for Alabama, a known D1 hotbed for East African distance stars.
Pkiach, who's also a former JUCO bronze and silver medalist at the cross country national meet, was solid in his first year at East Central, but not quite a national star. He won four conference titles, but did not advance to any NCAA Championships.
That changed last fall as Pkiach finished toward the front of every field that he was in. While one of his teammates, Aspel Kiprob, stole headlines by winning their season opener at the Southern Stampede, Pkiach was nearly as impressive there as he placed 4th to defeat Jan Lukas Becker among other All-American names.
He then finished 2nd at both the DBU Old Glory Gallup and the Great American XC Championships, cruised through his regional meet and finished one spot away (21st) from top-half All-American laurels.
Despite his veteran status, that was Pkiach's first NCAA Championships appearance, and his poise in that pressure-filled scenario was praiseworthy. After all, his presence as the Tigers' second scorer was enough to help them reach the podium somewhat comfortably.
We didn't see Pkiach over the latter two seasons of the 2023-24 academic year, but perhaps that was in an effort to preserve eligibility for 2024-25. Despite that absence and the fact that he has competed collegiately since the winter of 2020, we're confident that Pkiach still has eligibility and further room to grow.
17. Caleb Futter, Rs. Senior, Grand Valley State
As one of the bigger names returning to the Division Two cross country scene, some may have expected Caleb Futter to receive a higher placement in our preseason top-25 rankings.
To be clear, he has already finished higher than this ranking on the national stage. Look back to when he placed 14th at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships. He's also an eight-time individual All-American who won his first national title this past winter in the mile.
So...why is he placed in the bottom-half of our rankings?
Futter was barely an All-American last fall, placing 38th despite being a candidate for a top-10 finish. He also didn't exactly have an optimal end to the 2023-24 academic year, finishing 5th in an ultra-fast NCAA Championships steeplechase final and missing out on a top-eight finish in the metric mile a month after running a 3:43 PR. He was considered a title contender in both of those events.
Futter has had moments of brilliance at national meets, but has also sometimes underwhelmed relative to the immense expectations we have for him. Still, these are the placements and "problems" that virtually any runner in the country would take on if it meant they could enjoy Futter's triumphs.
We're eager to see how he responds in his final collegiate cross country campaign.
16. Peter Kipkemboi, Junior, East Central
The third East Central runner to be featured in our top-25 rankings so far (and not the last), Peter Kipkemboi was fittingly the Tigers' third scorer for much of last fall.
That meant Kipkemboi placed 3rd in smaller fields at the DBU Old Glory Gallup and the Great American XC Championships before finishing 35th at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships. Between then, he won the Central Regional XC Championships over his better-known teammates as well as Ryan Hartman, David Kibet, Donald Kibet and Gidieon Kimutai.
The reason why he's comfortably inside our top-25 rankings and ahead of Pkiach is that Kipkemboi seemed to continue to progress over the first half of 2024. He ran PRs from 1:52 (800) to 13:54 (5k), went three-for-three in conference titles in the half-mile, the metric mile and the 5k and then competed in the latter event at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
We also think there's reason to believe that he could have placed higher than he did at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships, even though he was an All-American, given how close he was to his teammates throughout the season up to that point. He was also just a sophomore racing at his first NCAA Championship event.
We'll admit, Kipkemboi has a relatively small sample size of NCAA cross country success. Still, the fact that he carried over and built upon that momentum on the oval makes us feel like this placement is none too bold.
