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TSR's 2024 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Men): #3 Carnegie Mellon Tartans
- Kevin Fischer
- Sep 11, 2024
- 7 min read
Written by Kevin Fischer, edits & additional commentary via Gavin Struve & Garrett Zatlin
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.
Over the last couple of years, the men of Carnegie Mellon have established themselves as the class of both the UAA and the Mid-Atlantic region.
They have set their identity as a team without a ton of flash, but one with a penchant for being steady, consistent, and tightly packed. In fact, at both the 2022 and 2023 cross country national meets, they were the highest-finishing team without an All-American. That stat is a perfect encapsulation of who they are.
Now, we have them ranked at TSR #3 entering this season, a finish that they won't be able to achieve without an All-American. The math makes that scenario nearly impossible.
In order to take the jump that we are projecting them to take, somebody on this team will have to emerge as a consistent frontrunner. If and when that happens, the quality of the rest of the roster that they have coming back should be more than enough to make the Tartans favorites to secure a podium finish.
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After staying in the Steel City to open their 2023 cross country season at the University of Pittsburgh against Division One and Two competition, the Tartans previewed the national meet course at Dickinson College three weeks later. They were fairly successful on that day, beating a solid Calvin team to win the meet despite competing without multiple key runners.
The Paul Short Run provided their firmest test to that point, and they finished an impressive 13th in the "Gold" race. Behind a balanced lineup led by Matthew Coyle (45th) and closed out by Jacob Hsu (122nd), the Tartans earned the second-highest finish among Division Three programs behind only UW-La Crosse.
Carnegie Mellon continued to roll at the SUNY Geneseo Mike Woods Invitational, comfortably vanquishing a very solid field by putting five men in the top-nine spots. Matthew Porter led the way in 3rd place and was quickly followed by Ryan Podnar (5th), Hsu (7th), Colin McLaughlin (8th) and Coyle (9th).
Their top-five time spread was just 15 seconds in a nationally competitive D3 field, as they beat strong adversaries in Lynchburg and Johns Hopkins, among others.
The Tartans' pack looked good, and as the postseason started, it began to look even better.
The UAA is one of the most competitive conferences in the country; five of the league's eight teams advanced to the 2023 NCAA XC Championships. Carnegie Mellon, of course, made those very strong distance programs look borderline inferior at the UAA XC Championships.
They once again kept their top-five time spread under 20 seconds, and this time recorded five of the top-seven overall finishers (Porter, Coyle, Podnar, Hsu and McLaughlin), starting with Porter as the silver medalist. That led to a total team score of 23 points. Washington U., a distant conference runner-up, tallied 65 points.
Somehow, the Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championship went even better. The Tartans defeated 2nd-place Johns Hopkins by 47 points, and all seven of their competitors finished in the top-12. Porter won the meet and Carnegie Mellon's five usual scorers all landed in the top-six.
Sure, there aren't a ton of high-level teams in the Mid-Atlantic region, but the gap between the Tartans and the Blue Jays being that massive was an excellent sign heading into the cross country national meet.
On the national stage, we saw this team utilize many of the same strengths that carried them throughout the season. But while their scoring pack was still tightly knit, it was never far enough up in the field.
Through the mile mark, they were led by Matthew Porter....in 150th place. At that point, they were in 24th place as a team. Porter fell back to 207th at the finish, but every other Tartan moved up with every split. The Tartans ultimately rose to 16th at the two-mile mark, 10th at the 5k mark, 9th at the 6k mark and finally 6th place at the finish.
The plan was clearly to start conservatively and move up through the field, but there just wasn't enough time for them to get in position to contend for a podium result. Still, Carnegie Mellon's 6th-place finish was a substantial improvement from the 2022 cross country national meet, where they were 11th, and they did it without a single top-40 finisher.
Colin McLaughlin was this team's highest individual finisher, in 47th place, with Ryan Podnar, Matthew Coyle, Charlie Murphy, and Jacob Hsu all finishing within the top-100. A lack of firepower on the national stage held the Tartans back from the podium, but the cohesiveness of their scoring lineup gave them a strong baseline.
* * *
Three of the Tartans who lined up at the 2023 cross country national meet will not be back this fall.
The most notable departure is Matthew Porter. He had a rough day at the 2023 cross country national meet, but he was the Mid-Atlantic regional champion and went on to qualify for the outdoor national meet in the 10,000 meters this past spring. He will be back for the 2025 outdoor track season, but has no cross country eligibility remaining.
Given that Porter held All-American upside and ample experience, his absence on the grass this fall will almost assuredly be felt. Yes, this team had great depth and strong stability, but part of that was because Porter was so reliable in his own right.
Charlie Murphy and Jacob Hsu are also out of cross country eligibility, having graduated. They were the fourth and fifth scorers, respectively, for Carnegie Mellon at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships, finishing 77th and 93rd. And just like we alluded to with Porter, the absences of both Hsu and Murphy leave a once-stable scoring pack with tons of questions.
Hsu in particular enjoyed some success on the track as well, most notably beating Washington U. star Cullen Capuano to win the 5000-meter title at the 2024 UAA Outdoor Championships.
David Durdaller, a 14:32 (5k) and 9:07 (steeple) man, also graduates and strips this team further of its depth.
Those are all names who will all be missed. And yet, a strong enough group returns that we don't think this squad will regress at all.
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Carnegie Mellon returns three top-60 finishers from last year's cross country national meet in Colin McLaughlin, Ryan Podnar, and Matthew Coyle.
McLaughlin has the highest upside of the bunch, having been a national qualifier over 1500 meters and in the 3000 meters on the track, earning NCAA Championship bronze in the latter event this past winter.
His 2024 outdoor track season was a little bit underwhelming considering his cross country and indoor track success in 2023-24, but that doesn't necessarily hurt his stock entering the fall months.
We believe that McLaughlin is fully capable of an All-American finish, perhaps even in the top-half of that range, this fall.
Given that he's produced back-to-back top-60 finishes at the NCAA XC Championships, we consider Coyle an All-American favorite as well. He experienced real success on the track this past spring, finishing a solid 16th over 10,000 meters at the 2024 outdoor national meet and dipping under 29:50 over that distance.
Podnar didn't show us anything on the track this year, but his proven cross country resume is something that can't be ignored. He was super consistent last fall, faring well in a variety of different fields. His floor appears to be very high, but it's his ceiling that will ultimately determine whether or not Carnegie Mellon is a podium squad this fall.
The other returner from last year's cross country national meet lineup is Aleksei Seletskiy, who finished 113th. He is a 3:47 (1500) man, but was unable to recapture that form this past spring. Still, this rising senior has a great chance to emerge as a scorer this fall given that he has improved each year on the grass.
There are a slew of other returners who have a shot at making an impact for the Tartans over the coming months. Eamon Brady did not race at the national meet last year, but he was 12th at Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships and 16th at the UAA XC Championships in 2023.
The Tartans' ninth and 10th runners from the UAA XC Championships, Thomas Damiani and Matthew Short, are also back and looking to break into the top-seven. At that conference meet last year, Damiani beat every other team's seventh man, and Short came within four seconds of doing the same.
Alex Ivanov ran on Carnegie Mellon's 2022 NCAA XC Championships squad and bears mentioning despite having raced just once last fall.
Breaking into this year's varsity lineup might not be an easy task for some of those returners (Brady feels like the best bet), as a couple of high-level transfers should shake things up.
Matthew Denton competed for Haverford at last year's cross country national meet, finishing 169th. He has run as fast as 3:49 (1500) and 14:48 (5k), so it seems more likely than not that he'll be a varsity talent in 2024. Another sub-15 (5k) guy joining the ranks is Anthony Toskin from Walsh, who has a personal best of 14:50. He competed at the 2023 NCAA D2 XC Championships, finishing 207th.
The Tartans are also bringing in a strong freshman class, but it will likely be quite difficult for any of their first-year talents to crack the top-seven with so many solid veteran options available. And as long as just a few of these men make large enough improvements, the scoring stability that left with the departures of so many veterans may actually be sustained fairly well.
* * *
Carnegie Mellon will be quite alright in 2024 despite losing some key names. This is a team that put nine men ahead of every other squad's seventh runner in arguably the toughest conference in Division Three, and there's no question that they have the returning talent to reload. What's more, they have supplemented their depth with a strong pair of transfers.
The expectation for Coach Tim Connelly's Tartans should be another year of improvement in the top-half of the team standings at the cross country national meet, this time onto the podium. Between Matthew Coyle and Colin McLaughlin, at least one true low-stick should emerge this fall, and the depth behind them figures to be just as impressive as it was a year ago.
