TSR's "If Everything Was Normal" D1 XC Top 25 Teams (Men): #12 Stanford Cardinal

We are aware that certain conferences and universities will not be competing this fall due to ongoing concerns surrounding COVID-19. However, for the sake of content, we have constructed these rankings as if a regular cross country season will happen.

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There were high expectations for Stanford going into 2019 and we at The Stride Report certainly played a big role in that as we ranked the Cardinal at TSR #1 our preseason rankings.

With Alex Ostberg, Alek Parsons, Steven Fahy and Thomas Ratcliffe returning for the Cardinal last fall, the team looked poised to have four, very realistic All-Americans.

Unfortunately, the season did not go quite as planned for Stanford. The start of their season was strong (losing only to Northern Arizona on two separate occasions), but they faltered at the PAC-12 Championships where they finished 3rd before eventually placing 6th at the national meet. Those weren't bad results by any means, but for a team that we thought could've won the national title, they weren't ideal either.

As we look into the future, both Ostberg and Fahy have run out of cross country eligibility while Ratcliffe has transferred to North Carolina. Only Alek Parsons returns as the team's prospective low-stick.

Still, there is plenty left in the cupboards for Stanford. As they continue to bring in strong recruiting classes, this roster is chalk-full of elite prospects who could have had a chance to establish themselves as key contributors for Stanford in 2020. Sadly, we will have to wait to see some of these young Cardinal prospects shine.

Regardless, it's important to keep one thing in mind.

This team is not rebuilding. This team is reloading.

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Any conversation about where Stanford would have landed in 2020 has to start with Alek Parsons. As we outlined in our individual rankings, the senior star has been a back-to-back All-American during his career with the Cardinal, which put him at TSR #33 in our rankings. But even then, we still feel like he has another level to reach.

Parsons did not have a great start to the 2019 cross country season, but came through in a big way during the postseason. He gives Stanford a high-level presence upfront who was a solid bet to finish as an All-American for a third time in a normal year.

After Parsons, it is hard to say who exactly will fill the next few spots in the lineup, although Stanford does not lack options. Looking at their returners, a few names pop up. At the top of the list are Clayton Mendez and Meika Beaudoin-Rousseau. Both men held their own at NCAA’s last year, finishing 99th and 102nd, respectively.

Overall, Mendez had a strong 2019 cross country season as he finished 37th at Nuttycombe and 21st at the PAC-12 Championships. With a 13:57 (5k) PR, he seems like the safest best to finish within Stanford’s top five whenever competition returns.

As for Beaudoin-Rousseau, his 2019 season did not indicate that he would finish 102nd at the NCAA Championships. He is still very much unproven, but the talent is there and he has shown that he can compete at the highest level, albeit in only one race.

Between those two, Stanford has a nice balance of consistency and upside, although neither Mendez nor Beaudoin-Rousseau are necessarily guaranteed to be the team's #2 and #3 options in this lineup.

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In addition to those two men are veterans Michael Vernau, Connor Lane, Callum Bolger and D.J. Principe.

We did not see Vernau finish a race in 2019, but he has shown plenty of exciting promise throughout his collegiate career. With personal bests of 13:59 (5k) and 29:06 (10k), the senior was primed to make a big impact for this team in 2020 if he was able to translate his success from the grass to the track.

As for Connor Lane, he is inexperienced on the grass despite his veteran status, but has the makings of a strong cross country runner based off of his track times. The Stanford ace owns personal bests of 8:08 (3k) add 13:42 (5k) which are stellar marks that indicate he was ready to make a big leap in 2020 in the fall. With plenty of other options throughout their roster, Stanford was likely hoping that Lane’s upside would catapult this team into a higher tier of the NCAA's most competitive programs.

After finishing 14th at the John McNichols Invite and 44th at Nuttycombe, Callum Bolger looked like a key member of Stanford’s lineup last year. Unfortunately, we did not get to see him race for the remainder of last season. He would have played a critical role in 2020 as he has plenty of cross country experience.

Bolger was 13th at the PAC-12 Championships in 2018 and 138th at NCAA’s in 2017. If he had made it through the entire 2020 season, Bolger likely would have been a very key scorer for Stanford. And, based on his prior performances, he likely would have been within the top-100 at Stillwater this year.

We finally get to D.J. Principe who has been in plenty of Stanford lineups throughout his career. He finished 22nd at the John McNichols Invitational last fall and was 31st at the PAC-12 Championships. However, the highlight of his career was when he placed 77th at the 2018 NCAA XC Championships.

It can be difficult at times to know what you are going to get out of Principe, but at the very least, he gives Coach Ricardo Santos another lineup option with an extensive amount of experience.

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Now for the youth movement in Palo Alto.

Three redshirt freshmen return after not competing for the team last fall. Devin Hart, Charles Hicks and Ryan Oosting all came to Stanford with five-star high school resumes. Hart and Hicks ran very well during the indoor track season while Oosting ran for the Netherlands at the U20 European Cross Country Championships where he finished 62nd overall.

Hart impressed many of us this past winter after running 8:02 (3k) and 14:00 (5k), but Hicks wasn’t far behind as he ran a personal best of 8:08 (3k).

All three of these young men would have pushed for scoring spots in this varsity lineup and could have dramatically changed how we saw Stanford in 2020 depending on their success and rate of improvement.

As for this year’s recruiting class, they are just as impressive. Thomas Boyden, Ky Robinson and Cole Sprout arrive to northern California with some high-level credentials.

Sprout, in particular, has been one of the best high school cross country runners over the last few years. He was 3rd at NXN in 2018 and 7th in 2019. He has run 4:02 in the mile and 8:40 in the 3200 meters. There really isn’t much more you could ask for from a high school prospect and in a non-Nico Young recruiting class, he likely would have been the seen as the top freshman going into 2020.

Boyden has also had great success at the national level in high school. He was 12th and 13th at the Footlocker Championships over the last two years and like Sprout, owns stellar PR’s of 4:04 (mile) and 8:50 (3200).

Hailing from Australia, Ky Robinson owns a personal best of 9:04 in the steeplechase and 14:32 in the 5000 meters. While he might not make the immediate impact that his freshmen teammates could, he gives the Cardinal another valuable piece who can offer depth and high-upside coming into this theoretical 2020 cross country season.

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Like many teams behind them in our preseason rankings, Stanford does not have the guaranteed front-runners that we are used to seeing from them. They have one true low-stick in Alek Parsons, but there are plenty of question marks behind him.

While Stanford does have plenty of runners who can fill those spots, it is hard to say with any certainty which guys will step up. Consistency isn't always their greatest strength, youth can be a liability on championship stages and there's no guarantee that some of these guys will be able to translate their performances on the track to the grass. Ultimately, despite their elite pedigree, this is why we weren’t able to put Stanford in our top 10 this year.

Still, this is a team brimming with talent and upside. Their last two recruiting classes bring plenty of potential and excitement. They still have numerous veterans on their roster and a handful of other talented men that we didn't even mention.

How quickly that potential turned into big-time results likely would have determined the success of the Stanford men in 2020.