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TSR's 2024 Preseason D3 XC Top 20 Rankings: #15-11 (Men)
- Kevin Fischer
- Aug 2, 2024
- 6 min read
Written by Kevin Fischer, additional edits & commentary via Gavin Struve & Garrett Zatlin
15. Isaac vanWestrienen, Junior, Cornell College
A 65th-place finish at last year’s cross country national meet was a solid result for Isaac vanWestrienen...but that’s not why we have him ranked in our top-15.
The real motive was because he had an indoor track campaign that was one to remember, running head-turning converted marks of 4:08 (mile), 8:03 (3k) and 14:00 (5k). He was actually ranked at NCAA #1 (D3) in the 3000 meters going into the indoor national meet. That was a far cry from where vanWestrienen was prior to this winter and it ultimately landed him our "Most Improved Award" for the indoor track season.
But after an underwhelming national meet double in which he finished 18th over 5000 meters and 19th in the 3k, vanWestrienen only raced once on the outdoor oval. The Cornell College ace contested a conference meet double in which he finished 3rd in the 10k and 7th in the 5k against lesser competition.
While a hot start to 2024 fizzled out for vanWestrienen, it's hard to argue that his breakout was any kind of fluke. It's difficult to fake fitness and this Ram star deserves a spot in our preseason rankings on the merit of how competitive he was with some of the best in the nation throughout the regular season during the winter.
Even without that breakout campaign earlier this year, vanWestrienen would still be an All-American candidate (and maybe even a favorite) for this upcoming cross country season. He was steady throughout last fall with competitive finishes of 11th at the Dan Huston Invitational, 26th at the Augustana Interregional and 3rd at the MWC XC Championships.
And now, we know that he has the potential to be something more.
Sure, there may be doubts about how well a few months of brilliance will translate to a different season, and yes, it's a bit presumptuous to suggest that he'll earn his first All-American finish in such convincing fashion this fall (although these rankings are not necessarily predictions for the 2024 NCAA XC Championships).
But anybody who has nearly cracked 8:00 (3k) and 14:00 (5k), whether through conversions or not, absolutely has a great deal of distance running talent. That natural ability should pair well with added experience in VanWestrienen's second NCAA cross country season.
14. Jacob Green, Senior, Wartburg
Throughout the 2022-23 academic year, Jacob Green found incredible success. He started the fall of 2022 under the radar, but finished his grass campaign an excellent 22nd place finish at the cross country national meet. On the track the following spring, he put up an eyebrow-raising 29:26 (10k) PR which ranked him among the best in the country.
In short, Green announced himself as a national distance star on a title contender -- the Wartburg men were our TSR #1 team entering last fall.
But after those breakthroughs, not everything was smooth sailing over the past year. During the 2023 cross country season, Green finished 32nd at Augustana Interregional, 11th at the Midwest Regional XC Championships and 51st at the cross country national meet, all of which were fairly underwhelming finishes relative to what he'd produced a year prior.
Green was solid on the track for much of this winter and spring, but he didn’t have any standout performances...that was, until the outdoor national meet. A 5th-place finish in the 10,000 meters was arguably the best run of his career and it silenced any doubts about his recent form.
The way that Green ended the past academic year alleviated most of the concerns that we had about him entering last fall. In fact, there's an argument to be made that he's in the best shape of his life. If his 2023 cross country campaign is his baseline/floor, then that's a strong spot to build back from.
We know the kind of runner Jacob Green can be and given the way that he closed his 2024 outdoor track season indicates that he has rediscovered his top form.
13. Nicholas Lyndaker, Junior, St. Lawrence
Largely a miler prior to last fall, Nicholas Lyndaker started to display incredible cross country prowess in 2023.
After a relatively unexciting 34th-place finish at D3 Pre-Nationals, the St. Lawrence talent began to quietly improve throughout October, notching a top-10 finish at the always-competitive Connecticut College Invitational and earning a runner-up finish at the Liberty League XC Championships behind RPI's Cory Kennedy.
After a solid regional meet, Lyndaker capped the cross country season with All-American honors, one year removed from a 197th-place finish in 2022 as a freshman. A 32nd-place finish on the national stage was right in line with how he ran through his other seven races in a busy but steady fall campaign.
Rarely do we see first-time All-Americans look so consistent in their breakout campaign. Perhaps that's why Lyndaker's fall success translated well to the track, especially over 3000 meters on the indoor oval and 5000 meters on the outdoor oval. There, he put down significant personal bests of 8:13 and 14:16, respectively.
Those marks didn't boost him into a new stratosphere, but they kept with his breakthrough earlier in the school year. Those efforts indicate why we see Lyndaker as highly dangerous and why we expect another rise from him over the coming months.
12. Cullen Capuano, Senior, Washington U.
Following a 38th-place finish at last year's cross country national meet, Cullen Capuano is able to call himself an All-American. However, you have to look a little deeper than that to understand how talented he really is.
The Washington U. talent beat several big names head-to-head between his 7th-place finish at the Augustana Interregional and 4th-place finishes at the UAA XC Championships and the Midwest Regional XC Championships. Those were excellent result and they positioned him for a potential top-20 finish, nationally.
While his NCAA XC Championship performance was solid, we knew that on his best day, Capuano was capable of a bit more. Even so, it was a considerable improvement upon his already-solid 62nd-place finish at the 2022 cross country national meet. Another improvement of 20-plus places, which seems realistic, would land him around where this ranking suggests.
Capuano has never competed at a national meet on the outdoor oval (he contested the 5k at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Championships), but has come painfully close to qualifying multiple times, including this past spring where he was the first man out of the 5000 meters despite a new 14:11 PR.
With that said, we believe that he is better on the grass and that he hasn't even shown his true upside in the fall. Depending on how you feel about Grant Matthai, Capuano arguably had the best national meet lead up of anyone in this section of our rankings. If he can take another step forward in fitness this season, Capuano can emerge as one of the nation's best distance runners.
11. Grant Matthai, Junior, UW-La Crosse
Grant Matthai's excellent body of work throughout last year's cross country season was overshadowed a bit by a tough NCAA XC Championships showing in which he finished 63rd.
We knew at the time that his national meet finish wasn't representative of what the 3rd-place WIAC XC Championship finisher and 4th-place North Regional XC Championship finisher could really do. Sure enough, he proved that to an even greater extent on the track.
At the indoor national meet, he ran a personal best of 14:03 over 5000 meters to finish in 5th place and he came back to place 8th in the 3k the next day. On the outdoor oval, he only raced once prior to the national meet, but he still managed to stay sharp enough to come away with another All-American finish, earning 7th place in the 5k.
The first-half of 2024 cemented Grant Matthai as one of D3's rising aerobic stars and perhaps the future face of UW-La Crosse's distance powerhouse as soon as this year. He needs to be flat-out better when it matters this season in order to meet UW-La Crosse's and his own individual aspirations. We don't have much worry about him doing so, however, especially because it wasn't like Matthai was terrible at the 2023 cross country national meet.
When Matthai is available, he has largely been pretty consistent, with the only real exception being the end of last fall.
With that said, he has gotten back to the national stage multiple times since then and has done plenty to prove that his clutch factor is not a concern. The sky's the limit this year for the Eagle ace.
