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TSR's 2025 Preseason D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Women): #5 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athenas
Written by Katie Hirsche, edits & additional commentary via Gavin Struve
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.
The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) women have followed a trend of reaching the cross country national meet podium every other year in the 2020s.
The Athenas were the national meet runner-up finishers in 2021, placed 10th at the 2022 NCAA XC Championships and 11th at the 2024 NCAA XC Championships with a 4th-place finish at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships (seven points away from a national title) sandwiched in between.
With six women who raced at the 2024 cross country national meet returning, along with two who sat out last fall after competing at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships, it's easy to see how the Athenas could get back to the podium in 2025 -- or at least, a top-five finish.
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The Athenas began their 2024 season in earnest at the UC Riverside Invitational. There, low-stick standouts Riley Capuano and Sadie Drucker blazed to 28th and 31st-place finishes, respectively, against Division One competition.
Angela Gushue (94th), Revere Schmidt (111th), and Amelia Opsahl (149th) completed the scoring lineup and helped their team place 17th against high-level competition. While there were a few gaps in the lineup, there was a lot of upside in this youth-based team with two sophomore scorers (Drucker and Schmidt) and two freshmen who finished within 10 seconds of Opsahl (Brannan Rosenfeld and Olivia Backholm).
Fast forward to the Paul Short Run "White" race, a cross country battle that was won by Amherst. However, the Athenas still came out on top with a promising 6th place effort of their own. Capuano, Gushue and Drucker went 15-20-23 in that order for a strong top three, with Schmidt and Backholm placing 78th and 96th to close out scoring.
While we expected Capuano to provide a slightly more potent lead-scoring punch, promising results from Gushue and Drucker balanced that out. However, backend gaps to the Athenas' fourth and fifth scorers limited CMS in a deep field and kept them from contending with the top teams on hand.
Their next big competition was the SCIAC XC Championships. After defeating many of the same teams convincingly at the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational two weeks earlier, the Athenas showed out en route to their 14th consecutive conference title.
Capuano, Drucker, Gushue and Schmidt went 1-2-4-6, respectively. Olivia Smith (23rd) served as the final scorer and did enough to clinch the conference title with almost half as many points as runner-up Pomona-Pitzer. CMS also had Backholm in 26th place and several more athletes in the top 35 for added depth if needed.
At the West Regional XC Championships, CMS beat Colorado College by a single point to secure the automatic national meet bid.
While we typically don't put too much stock into regional meet results, that was a notable development given how Colorado College looked like a national title contender for much of last season. Capuano won her third meet in a row while Drucker and Gushue joined her in the top 10 in that setting. Schmidt placing 13th was also significant.
Then came the cross country national meet, the team's season finale. On that stage, the gaps between scorers that we had seen all season long ultimately limited the Athenas’ chances at an even better finish.
Capuano finished as a top-half All-American for the second year in a row, placing 18th, while Drucker’s national meet debut brought a strong 61st-place result. However, a drop-off to the rest of the team's scorers is where things got tricky to manage.
Gushue, who placed 119th, was bit behind where we expected her to be, although Schmidt was solid in 129th place. However, Backholm -- the best of the three underclassmen at the back of the lineup that day -- finished a distant 226th place, leaving a large backend gap that left the Athenas looking for greater balance.
As a result, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps still recorded a strong 11th-place finish, but they were still comfortably behind the top-10 teams.
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Angela Gushue was a valuable third scorer all of last fall, offering crucial lineup stability to a team that, at times, needed exactly that in 2024. No longer having her is a loss that will be keenly felt by the Athenas in the coming months.
In turn, the CMS women will need some of their returners to step up and bridge the gap to their top runners. Gushue was the name who often bridged the gap between the two halves of the Athenas' scoring group last fall.
Thankfully for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, held could come from several sources. In addition to the six returners from their 2024 varsity core, the Athenas have two top-75 finishers from the 2023 NCAA XC Championships rejoining the ranks.
Sara Wexler only ran one cross country race last fall, but she served as CMS's fourth scorer on their 2023 podium team. She was also better on the track in 2025 than in 2023-2024. She dropped her 5k PR from 17:43 to 17:22, a good sign for her fitness trajectory going into this fall.
Then there is Elle Marsyla who didn't race at all during the 2024-25 academic year. If healthy, however, she gives CMS another low-stick. She was a 27th-place All-American at the 2023 cross country national meet and finished 16th in the 10k at the 2024 outdoor national meet. Not only would a full-strength Marsyla make up for the loss of Gushue, but she would raise this team's ceiling immensely.
Early returns are promising after she finished runner-up at the Coyote Challenge on September 6th, behind Capuano, but ahead of Drucker.
When it comes to varsity returners, we need to talk about Riley Capuano first. The 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championship runner-up over 1500 meters didn’t compete on the track in 2025, but looked sharp in a rust-busting effort at the Coyote Challenge last weekend. We know what we'll get from her as our TSR #11 runner in our preseason individual rankings: one of the most experienced and reliable low-stick stars in the country.
Sadie Drucker was beyond solid as a redshirt rookie last fall, but she didn’t compete on the track beyond a 10:11 (3k) effort in January. She’s listed as an "Honorable Mention" individual outside of our preseason top-25 rankings and could have All-American potential if she’s fully fit given how consistent she was last year.
In our eyes, Drucker feels like the focal "x-factor" on this team in 2025.
Revere Schmidt showed season-long consistency and a solid floor in the fall of 2024. She improved measurably after gaining valuable varsity experience as a freshman in 2023 and should serve as a middle-lineup piece or a stabilizing backend scorer in 2025.
Olivia Backholm was impressive on the track in 2025 and could be a more potent scorer as a sophomore this season. She ran 4:43 (1500), 10:59 (steeple), and 17:48 (5k) this past spring, times which indicate a higher ceiling than she showed last fall.
Olivia Smith is only a sophomore now, and like Backholm, she showed her youth a bit at the 2024 cross country national meet. Her outdoor track season wasn’t as potent as Backholm’s, but she’s now a 4:47 metric miler who has more experience under her belt.
Sally Gaskell was the Athenas’ sixth finisher at the 2024 NCAA XC Championships, placing 233rd close behind Backholm as a sophomore. Brannan Rosenfeld was competitive as a freshman last fall and ran an impressive 17:37 (5k) PR in the spring. Ditto for Jie Yi Denise Chen, who ran 17:38 (5k) as a freshman this past spring.
The Athenas don't need their backend scorers to be incredible in order to return to the podium; they just need them to improve and raise CMS's floor as stabilizing forces.
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With the return of all but Gushue from their 2024 national meet squad, the Athenas already had a high floor entering 2025. However, Marsyla and Wexler being back and looking like their 2023 selves raises CMS's ceiling to that of a podium contender.
Those two provide two more low-stick candidates alongside Capuano and Drucker. Meanwhile, Schmidt and a horde of youngsters should form a highly competitive back half of the varsity rotation.
They'll need health and more cohesion in their scoring structure, but the Athenas' trend of recording podium finishes in odd-numbered years during the 2020s could certainly continue in 2025.
