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TSR's 2024 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Women): #2 U. of Chicago Maroons
- Conor Daly
- Sep 12, 2024
- 8 min read
Written by Conor Daly, 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.
There's an exciting season ahead for the U. of Chicago women. That’s because they have a serious chance to win their first national title in program history. It’s a quest they've been chasing for years now. The upperclassmen on this team know just how heartbreaking it has been to get so close to winning that title, but coming up just short.
It’s been the story of their last two cross country seasons. The Maroons were a mere three points away from winning the national title in 2022 and only five points away in 2023. Those are the narrowest of margins and show that this team has the talent to take it, but just didn’t have things go their way on the right day.
And while our yet-to-be-named TSR #1 team stands in the way of the Maroons’ ambitions, there are a lot of experienced and talented names that return to Chicago to take on the challenge.
More specifically, we’re talking about putting faith in five returners from U. of Chicago's lineup at last year’s cross country national meet. With endless possibilities on the horizon, we’re excited to see this team in action over the coming weeks.
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In the early stages of their 2023 cross country season, the Maroons were anything but shy about flexing their particularly talented lineup. No team could come anywhere close to them as they posted a perfect score in both of their first two races (the St. Francis Saints Twilight Invite and the Gil Dodds Invitational). The latter triumph was particularly head-turning since it came against our then-TSR #9 team, Washington U.
Maddie Kelly and Evelyn Battleson-Gunkel traded wins in those efforts. That hot start was particularly encouraging to see from Battleson-Gunkel, who at the time was primarily known as a star over the middle distances. In fact, she had only ever completed one collegiate cross country race prior to last year!
The U. of Chicago women faced more serious competition in the Joe Piane “Gold” Race. In a setting of mid-major Division One and Division Two teams, it was hard to measure exactly how well the Maroons performed. They finished 3rd as a team, and that was with Maddie Kelly having an “off” day (41st place). Even so, that race was largely inconsequential when you look at their season as a whole.
It wasn’t until the Augustana Interregional Invitational in the middle of October that the Maroons lined up against many of Division Three’s fellow premier teams. We looked forward to seeing a matchup between U. of Chicago (then-TSR #2) against our top-ranked team, Wartburg.
That matchup ended up being everything we could have imagined and then some. Battleson-Gunkel had the best race of her life up until that point to take home a season-defining win against a loaded field. Kelly wasn’t far behind in 7th place, while the rest of the scoring bunch was phenomenal as well. The trio of Sophie Tedesco, Elisabeth Camic and Caitlin Jorgensen quickly closed out the scoring by going 11-14-15, respectively, in what was an assertive display of top-tier depth.
In the end, the Maroons took home a convincing 48-point to 68-point win over the Wartburg women. This team was simply in a magical phase of the season in which they could do no wrong. Battleson-Gunkel and Kelly both looked like national-caliber low-sticks, while there was plenty of depth that made finding a flaw in this lineup nearly impossible.
U. of Chicago's fairytale season didn’t last forever, though, as they fell to the NYU women in their next race at the UAA XC Championships.
The team battle for the conference crown wasn’t all that close, either. Every single one of NYU’s top-seven runners beat their U. of Chicago counterpart. It wasn’t that any single woman on the Maroons ran poorly, it was just that each of them needed to be at the top of their game to beat NYU, which wasn’t the case that day.
The U. of Chicago women then suffered another loss at the Midwest Regional XC Championships, this time to Wartburg, a team they beat four weeks prior.
While we don’t usually put much emphasis on regional results, this one -- when coupled with their conference meet performance -- made us feel increasingly skeptical about our once-national title favorites. It seemed that they were slipping at the worst possible time.
But at the cross country national meet, the Maroons proved that was far from the truth.
Kelly and Camic ran out of their minds to place 7th and 19th, respectively, in their season finales. Battleson-Gunkel was sandwiched between them on the lower end of expectations in 13th place, but still held on for a potent low-stick finish. Behind those three top-half All-Americans, Jorgensen and Tedesco remained the steady scoring pieces that they had been all season, finishing 74th and 85th, respectively, to close out an awesome team performance.
When it was all said and done, the results board read that U. of Chicago had placed 3rd, only five points behind the eventual national champions (Carleton). While being heartbreakingly close to the top of the podium must have been bittersweet, the Maroons still saved one of their best efforts of the season for last and performed admirably when the stakes were highest.
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Entering this fall, U. of Chicago suffered a pair of significant losses via the departures of Maddie Kelly, who will be finishing her collegiate career at Wake Forest, and Caitlin Jorgensen. The former brought great firepower to the lineup when it mattered most whilst the latter was a top-five name for the group during every race last fall, offering consistency that’s hard to come by.
But in the grand scheme of things, those losses aren’t crushing on the team level. That's because U. of Chicago still brings back a very formidable core of women.
Leading this team once again will be our TSR #2 individual, Evelyn Battleson-Gunkel. The 13th-place finisher at last year's cross country national meet had flashes of even better performances earlier in the year, like winning the Augustana Interregional Invitational or placing 2nd at the UAA XC Championships.
Since then, she has validated her breakout 2023 cross country season by transitioning to the longer distances on the track. The two-time bronze medalist at the indoor national meet now holds stunning personal bests of 16:27 (5k) and 34:25 (10k).
That progress should, in theory, set Battleson-Gunkel up very nicely for an even better cross country campaign now that she’s a bit more experienced in races that are over a mile in distance. She’s a candidate to win every race that she steps to the line of, and we can’t imagine her falling outside of top-15 status nationally on any given day.
You can also expect Elisabeth Camic to be at the front of races this fall. Entering this season at TSR #18, she’s a highly underrated second name who may surprise many. Her 14th-place finish at the Augustana Interregional Invitational and 13th-place finish at the Midwest regional meet were both quite strong, but her 19th-place run at the 2023 cross country national meet was completely unexpected and stands as a result that instantly boosted her to another level.
Predominantly a miler, Camic has continued to make great progress on the track. She has recorded PRs of 4:54 (mile) and 4:27 (1500), the latter of which stands out in a huge way. Especially in a program that tends to develop middle distance athletes who run very well over the 6k distance on the grass, it seems only fitting that she will continue to progress this fall.
There’s also Sophie Tedesco and Estelle Snider, who were well behind Camic last fall, but whose results on the track suggest that they have largely bridged that gap and could (or even should?) be All-Americans come November.
Both of those women have a similar long distance focus that they have flexed on the track, each holding 16:51 (5k) personal bests and sub-35:30 (10k) marks. The duo ran together in the 10k at the 2024 outdoor national meet, where Tedesco placed 14th while Snider was ahead in 10th.
That’s not Snider’s lone national meet appearance this year, either. She was 11th over 5000 meters at the 2024 indoor national meet. And as impressive as those results are, they're even more astonishing for someone who was a freshman last year. It’s even more rare to see a rookie fare so well in the true long distance events, which tend to be dominated by upperclassmen.
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This team’s seventh runner at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships, Emma Kelly, returns to expand her role. The younger sister of Maddie Kelly had a strong season last fall, with a 29th-place finish at the Augustana Interregional Invitational and a 15th-place finish at the UAA XC Championships.
That latter performance, in particular, is very good when you consider the strength of women’s distance running in the UAA. While not astonishing at the individual level, finishing 162nd at the cross country national meet and running 4:36 (1500) make up a very solid resume for a rising junior. She'll need to finish far higher than that if she's to be the final scorer for a national champion, but we trust Kelly's pedigree.
By this point, we’ve covered the Maroons’ five returners from their 3rd-place national finish in 2023. It's an encouraging group, but if someone were to get hurt or if there’s to be a breakthrough star of this program, then there are some more names who we must take the time to highlight.
The first is Nora Holmes, whose 4:35 (1500) and 4:57 (mile) personal bests give her a resume almost identical to that of Emma Kelly. And instead of speculating as to what she could do this fall, the middle distance talent has already began to prove herself on the grass in 2024.
In the Maroon's season opener, Holmes won the Saints Twilight Invite 5k ahead of her teammates in what we would largely consider to be a “B” team put out by U. of Chicago. Most notably, Holmes took home the win ahead of Snider. Between that effort and looking at past results on this course, Holmes suddenly looks like a favorite for a spot in the varsity lineup.
Also likely to toe the line as a part of this team’s varsity lineup is incoming freshman Elsa Krummel. The San Fransisco native holds strong, but not crazy, personal bests on the track. Instead, it’s her cross country resume that sticks out to us.
And luckily for her, that’s just the season we’re talking about in this article.
Krummel was the 2023 CIF Division Five cross country individual state champion. And if you’re skeptical about that result since Division Five houses the smallest schools in California, then consider her 24th-place finish at the Foot Locker West Regional XC Championships, and maybe that will change your mind.
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All in all, it’s easy to get excited about a team that has a foolproof name like Battleson-Gunkel to minimize scoring up front. Add in two more sub-17:00 (5k) women, and that makes for some unparalleled firepower. There’s not another program that we can think of (and our research is extensive) that can say they are home to three talents under that barrier.
With five proven women returning to this program, there’s not all that much uncertainty as to what the lineup will look like. And for the most part, that’s a positive. Each woman on Coach Chris Hall's team knows what it will take to toe the line ready to compete for a national title in November and is ready to guide themselves and their teammates towards that goal.
