Production via Wyatt Barnsley On this week’s episode of The Stride Report Podcast, Garrett is joined by Maura Beattie to break down the NCAA freshman class rankings and debate which programs brought in the best rookies in the nation. The two TSR veterans dig into surprising trends among this year’s newcomers, highlight standout teams and true home-run recruiting classes, and discuss which programs might deserve to move up or down the rankings. The conversation also touches on limited freshman classes at Washington and Oregon, a few honorable mention surprises, and wraps with Maura revealing her top freshman classes on both the men’s and women’s sides. Be sure to listen, subscribe and review! (3:46) Surprising Freshmen Trends (5:38) Standout Teams (13:22) Home-run Classes (19:21) Who Should Move Up/Down? (25:08) Limited Freshmen Recruiting Classes at Washington and Oregon (28:14) Honorable Mention Surprises (36:14) Maura’s Top Freshman Classes (Men) (38:22) Maura’s Top Freshman Classes (Women) You can listen to that episode (and others) on our PODCASTS  page! You can also find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Soundcloud. If you like it, be sure to leave us a rating  and a review ! Note: If you're having issues loading the episode on the site via mobile, try refreshing  the episode page. We will look into this issue for future episodes.

Written by Aimee Mackenzie, edits & additional commentary via Garrett Zatlin Matthew Molinaro has been charged with the first degree premeditated murder of 26 year old Peyton Bilbia on January 4th, 2026. The news was first highlighted by FloTrack on Tuesday afternoon. A former Division Three runner for Ohio Northern, Molinaro won the 2018 NCAA D3 indoor national title over 800 meters. He held a half-mile personal best of 1:47.73 from June of 2017 and went on to compete as a professional runner with NJNY Track Club. Peyton Bilbia was found deceased at his apartment on the 800 block of East Summit Street in Milford, Michigan on New Year's Eve . The discovery was made after his girlfriend prompted police to perform a wellness check on him after a period of being unable to make contact with Bilbia. Peyton Bilibia's girlfriend had previously dated Molinaro and, in December of 2025, had filed a personal protection order against Molinaro. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald released the following statement ... "Peyton Bilbia should be with us today...Instead, his life was cut short because of what appears to be a domestic dispute. This case is a tragic reminder that the danger from domestic violence doesn't end when a relationship ends." Molinaro was arrested by Oakland County Sheriff's Office Fugitive Apprehension Team on New Year's Eve at a bar in Royal Oak, Michigan. On January 4th, 2026  the 52-1 District Court formally arraigned Molinaro. He was denied bond by a judge and has been held in custody at the Oakland County Jail. A probable cause conference  has been scheduled for January 19th by a judge. Scott Tarasiewicz, Chief of Police at the Milford Police Department, stated ... "I completely endorse the prosecutor's decision.The evidence in this case supports the harshest of criminal charges." Domestic Violence Resources National Domestic Violence Hotline 800-799-7233 (Available 24/7) Government & State Based Resources https://www.justice.gov/ovw/resources-for-survivors

NOTE: This article was originally published in January of 2024. The below criteria is a duplicate of last year's rubric with the exception of a few changes. Yep, we're bringing it back! One of our most popular series of content each and every year is our Freshman Class Distance Rankings. What we do is look at all of the CURRENT freshmen around the NCAA (who specialize over 800 meters and up) and attempt to evaluate which programs brought in the best young distance talents. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Garrett, the academic year is already half-way over. We've got indoor track races coming soon! Why are we doing these rankings now?" Well, simply put, we just don't have enough time to post these rankings during the summer months. That is, after all, when our preseason cross country lists dominate the site. Not only that, but many schools don't have updated rosters at that point in the year and a handful of international names don't sign with an NCAA program until the winter or spring months anyway. It's also unlikely that we'll have any major results on the indoor oval until the third weekend in January. This makes the next week-and-a-half a fairly good time for us to fill the void with something that will probably cause a lot of arguments (which have already started at TSR). Before we release our current Freshman Class Distance Rankings, we thought it would be a good idea to give you an idea of how we constructed these lists, how we collected the data and when you can expect to see our content... The Content & Our Publishing Timeline The Stride Report is aiming to release our top-10 Division One Freshman Class Distance Rankings starting Monday or Tuesday (beginning with our "Just Missed" and "Honorable Mention" groups). Our top-five Division Two rankings and our top-five Division Three rankings will likely be published starting early next week. We will also be following the same release schedule that you saw last year. For D1, that means that we will be publishing teams 10-9-8 for the men and 10-9-8 for the women on the first day. The next day, we'll be publishing 7-6-5 for the men and 7-6-5 for the women. The day after that, we'll be publishing 4-3-2 for the men and 4-3-2 for the women. Finally, on the last day, the top-ranked freshman classes on both the men's and women's sides will get their own articles. Then, shortly thereafter, D2 will post sections 5-4-3 on one day followed by their top-two teams the next day. The D3 rankings will follow the same schedule immediately after. An Important Clarifier... We understand that the timing of these rankings is a bit odd, especially since we already had cross country action take place this past fall. However, it's important to note that we are ranking CURRENT TRUE FRESHMEN . So, to be very clear, we're looking at athletes who graduated from high school in 2025. We are NOT looking at the Class of 2026. These are athletes who are CURRENTLY in the NCAA. Additional Criteria Redshirt freshmen are not included in these rankings. Transfers from other universities are also not included in these rankings unless they are true freshmen. If an athlete has anything other than freshman eligibility in any season for this academic year, we will not consider that athlete in these rankings. Missions, however, are a very challenging aspect to manage when it comes to our rankings. Ultimately, we decided that if you were a high school senior who graduated in 2025 and committed to run for a certain university, then you'll be factored into these rankings even if you went on a mission this year (or in the near future). That, however, entirely depends on if we were able to find your commitment at all. Data Collection & Rankings This year, I hired someone (former TSR veteran, Maura Beattie) whose sole goal it was to collect recruiting data across the NCAA for Division One. Maura spent tons of time scouring the internet for any and all true freshmen she we could find. We looked at essentially every program that has been even remotely competitive in the distance events over the past few years. The good news is that, unlike past years, these rosters were updated and actually had their new names listed. We didn't have to go to a ton of different places to find our data this year. Of course, actually ranking these groups is an entirely different story. Let me just throw out this disclaimer while I'm here: There are going to be A LOT of strong and impressive freshman classes that didn't make it into our rankings. We have about eight men's teams and roughly four women's teams who we thought could have been considered for a top-10 spot, but didn't get ranked. When it comes to rankings, we looked a variety of things such as... Personal bests Overall depth Championship experience and championship accolades Superstar talents / nationally-recognizable names Roster needs Subjective factors such as... Racing style Consistency Potential / Upside Roster fit / Skillset Etc. Just like last year, the first three pieces of our criteria hold the most weight in our rankings. Infield at the 2025 NCAA Outdoor Championships during the men's 10k // Photo via Andrew LeMay Naturally, you have to be fast (read: have fast times). We can look at as many intangibles as we want, but at the end of the day, you still need to have a top mark or two. And when you have a ton of fast times via a number of different athletes (read: a lot of depth), then that certainly helps a team's ranking as well. The same can be said about national meet / championship experience. We view that as a major asset for someone who is entering the NCAA level. Of course, we also looked at a handful of other components, many of which are listed above. Roster fit, for example, is a bigger deal than some people may think. If someone is middle distance focused, but ends up attending an aerobic-centric or short sprints-centric powerhouse, then on paper, that doesn't align very well. But conversely, if a team is cross country dominant and needs more event diversity via a greater middle distance presence, then that should only help the team over the long-term. And with that line of thinking, you can see how those are two conflicting aspects to balance when crafting rankings. Those of you who read The Stride Report often also know that consistency is a major factor that we consider. It's great to see someone run a monster time or have a phenomenal race, but can they replicate that kind of performance consistently? Or was their breakout effort more of an outlier performance? That matters, especially at the NCAA level when the postseason rolls around. Trophies lined up at the 2025 NCAA D3 XC Championships // Photo via Ryanne Sutton Racing styles are something that we lightly analyze, although it's admittedly tough to offer detailed breakdowns for every. single. athlete. who we'll be mentioning in these rankings. However, for those who we do have tape on, racing styles matter. If someone understands the nuances of tactics, how to capitalize on their strengths and when to make moves, then that should give them a massive advantage as they continue to build their fitness. In theory, their growth as a nationally competitive talent should be accelerated. Oh, and in addition to everything we just mentioned, we should also note that every division had at least three TSR contributors reviewing our rankings. Simply put, we were very thorough. International athletes There is an increasing number of NCAA programs who are recruiting international athletes. However, just because a program brought in one or two overseas superstars doesn't necessarily mean that they deserve (or not deserve) a top-10 ranking. In a few instances, some international athletes may have a limited number of results for us to review. Those athletes can also, at times, face challenges with consistency or acclimating to NCAA tactics in their first few seasons. Of course, given their incredible raw fitness and immense upside, those runners still hold tons of value that is impossible to ignore. In a few instances, international athletes may be older than 18 or 19 years old. And yet, despite that, they are listed on their respective rosters as freshmen. Unless we have been told otherwise, we are basing our rankings off of what those rosters say. Is it possible that there are one or two athletes we included who aren't actually considered to be true freshmen? Sure, maybe. And is it possible that a program added an athlete who is beginning school this winter, but we didn't catch it? Yes, that is also possible. But otherwise, we feel like these rankings should be a fairly accurate representation of which programs brought in the best collection of young distance talents.

Rankings construction & analysis by Abby Waddington, Morgan Boonshaft, Ethan Moore & Garrett Zatlin Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Every year, we craft rankings for the top-50 distance recruits from the senior class across the United States. Then, at the end of every season, we update our lists to include any new names who have suddenly risen to national prominence. This is the second of our four annual rankings editions. Remember, these lists are for current high school seniors who specialize in the 800 meters and/or higher. Don't see yourself or a certain individual during this update? Don't worry, everyone will have another chance to crack our top-50 rankings via multiple updates throughout the academic year. As always, our rankings take a wholistic approach. We look at results across all three seasons of competition and also evaluate a multitude of intangibles such as consistency, experience, progression, momentum, range, etc. Oh, and fast times help...a lot. CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR FULL RANKINGS

"Did you ever think The Stride Report would become this? Who would have thought that it would become what it is today?" Truthfully, I always did. As I've said before, I always thought The Stride Report had the potential to be big, even when I was first starting out and the site could more accurately be described as a glamorized blog. Of course, part of that unfounded optimism was simply due to being a naive college kid. Heck, I didn't even know what "big" looked like or meant in this context. And yet, despite anticipating that The Stride Report would eventually reach it's current scale, I have to admit, our brand, our identity, our site, our content offerings -- none of that matches the vision that I once had for TSR back in 2017. That, however, may be a good thing. *  *  * My initial vision for The Stride Report was far more myopic than it is now. When I first started, I wanted to write analytical feature pieces similar to what you would see on The Ringer ...and that's about it. Nowadays, we offer in-depth analysis, the most extensive rankings in our sport, pre-race predictions, news and headlines, transfer and recruiting articles, we have expanded to every NCAA division, have begun to offer NAIA analysis and even offer analysis on high school results as well! All of that, of course, is reserved just to articles and pages found on our website. In 2025, we introduced a Social Media Admin in Lauren Cawley who, along with great help from Luis Flores and, for a few months, Anna Petr, began to dramatically alter our social media presence. On YouTube , our total channel subscribers rose 180% in 2025 compared to 2024. Our watch time rose 283% more and our total channel views rose by so much, that YouTube didn't even give us a specific metric other than >999%. This, in turn, has opened up a new form of revenue for us that makes it slightly easier to pursue new projects and areas of coverage (something you'll notice in 2025). And Instagram ? Well, the metrics don't go back far enough to properly measure, but we gained at least 10,000 new followers in less than a year and reached a month where we eclipsed over 10,000,000 views! The Stride Report Podcast ? Yep, that's grown too, enough so that we were able to partner with our friends at Bleav over the last few months! And TikTok ? Well we barely used that platform until this past year, but roughly 5,500,000 views in 2025 isn't too shabby considering that we're still growing in that area. Put simply, The Stride Report's brand and identity has seemingly evolved beyond just articles -- our audio and video space has grown extensively and is primed to be even more robust in 2026! *  *  * Of course, none of that means that we're ignoring our actual writing and our website -- if anything, our promising growth in audio and video has allowed us to make new investments to our written coverage in 2026! Whether that's introducing sprints analysis , placing greater focus on our NAIA space , producing more headline-based articles or further investing in our already-awesome D1, D2 and D3 teams, there hasn't been this much room to grow for our website in a handful of years. Even so, challenges will arise, hard decisions will have to be made and not everything we try will work (or even be popular). When you have as many facets to our content offerings as The Stride Report does, scaling doesn't always look pretty. But...isn't that how you evolve? Heck, isn't that how anyone and anything evolves? And in today's ever-changing landscape -- both within the NCAA and media in general -- evolving as a company and a brand feels necessary for survival. *  *  * At the conclusion of 2023, as we prepared to enter 2024, I penned an open letter to our audience explaining that TSR as a company was still " Learning to be Aggressive ." And while I knew what that meant, I would be lying if I said I entirely understood how I was going to implement that. But as we enter 2026, the vision seems clearer and the path forward is more pronounced. Maybe that's because most of our writers have shown far greater comfort in their roles and, as a result, their writing has improved in a major way. Maybe that's because our podcast continues to gain momentum and we now have the support of a partner in Bleav. Maybe that's because our social media channels have become dramatically stronger assets for us than they ever were before. All of those things "could be" the reason why we're optimistic about 2026. But at the end of the day, none of this is possible if my mom remained our only reader like she did nearly a decade ago (hi mom). It is all of you, our ever-growing audience and group of readers, who make The Stride Report so special and so worth it to build. The support, the investment in who we are -- that is the one aspect of our website that has evolved more than anything else, and it's only been for the better. Thank you to everyone who continues to support us in what we're trying to do. We want to be the best, because you deserve the best. And our ongoing pursuit of that goal will never stop. Cheers to a happy and healthy 2026. Your loyal admin, Garrett Zatlin The Stride Report