Preseason Regional Rankings for Division III Cross Country Announced

NEW ORLEANS—The preseason NCAA Division III Cross Country Regional Team Rankings, released Tuesday by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA), largely represent the status quo from last November.

Regional Rankings Summary PDF | DIII XC Rankings Central
QUICK LINKS: Men’s Regions | Women’s Regions

On the men’s side, every defending regional champ was ranked No. 1 in their respective region. That’s defending national champion St. Olaf in the Central Region; SUNY Cortland (co-No. 1 with SUNY Geneseo) in the Atlantic; North Central (Ill.) in the Midwest; Williams in the New England; Wabash in the Great Lakes; Bridgewater (Va.) in the South/Southeast; Johns Hopkins in the Mideast, and Pomona-Pitzer in the West.

Three women’s teams are tipped to defend their regional titles: Williams in the New England Region, Johns Hopkins in the Mideast, and the Midwest’s Chicago. The rest of the country is represented by new No. 1s in SUNY Geneseo in the Atlantic; Carleton in the Central; Oberlin in the Great Lakes; Emory in the South/Southeast; and Willamette in the West.

Williams, Hopkins, and Geneseo are the only schools to be ranked No. 1 regionally for both men and women; St. Olaf, Haverford, Bridgewater, and Calvin all have men’s and women’s teams in the top two.

Geneseo is the only school from the aforementioned group to sweep No. 1 for both sexes despite neither winning a regional title last fall. After 23 years at the helm, well-respected head XC coach Mike Woods has announced that 2014-15 is his last year as the boss of the distance programs there, but the high rankings aren’t an early retirement present: Geneseo returns all seven men and six of seven women from last year’s top-20 teams.

Before 2013, all regions were capped at five berths to the national championship. That cap was removed last fall, but the broad consensus among coaches and DIII observers was that the selection committee was conservative in taking advantage of the new, uncapped world. Last year, the Midwest and New England got six teams to the national meet; everywhere else was under the old cap.

With the changed format on the books for a full year now, look for selectors to be more aggressive in rewarding the best regions with six or seven bids to the national meet. What does that mean for you, fan of the rankings? Start following those 6-10 slots even more closely.

NCAA Division III Regional Championships will be held around the country Saturday, November 15.

USTFCCCA Regional Cross Country Rankings are determined either subjectively by a single member coach or a panel of member coaches (in the Central and Mideast) in each respective region. The regional representative is tasked with weighing returning team strength with current-season results in determining predicted team finishes at the NCAA Regional Championships.

A Closer Look: MEN’S Regional Team Rankings

North Central (Ill.) is ranked No. 1 in the Midwest, perennially and objectively the toughest men’s region in DIII. Perhaps the ultimate respect paid to a team in the preseason rankings ends up in the Cardinals’ account, as they graduate their top three runners from a team that won the Midwest Region and took second at nationals last fall, but still took the top spot in the Midwest, anyway. They haven’t lost a regional championship since 2007.

The quality of the Midwest means that a No. 2 ranking connotes serious expectations for UW-Eau Claire. Only once in the last 18 years has Eau Claire finished higher at the regional meet than the No. 2 Midwest team did at the national meet. However, a stellar mix of freshmen and transfers has shot the Blugolds to unprecedented heights in the pollsters’ eyes.

Defending national champ St. Olaf was a unanimous pick as No. 1 in the Central region. The unanimity is richly deserved, as the Oles return six out of their top seven from a squad that pulled off an upset national title last November.

In the Mideast, Johns Hopkins is ranked No. 1 after winning their first ever regional and Centennial Conference titles last fall. The battles between them, No. 2 Haverford, and No. 3 Dickinson (both of whom have never lost to Hopkins at nationals) will be among the chippiest in the nation this fall.

When preseason No. 1 Wabash won the Great Lakes championship last fall, it ended a seventeen-year title streak for No. 2 Calvin. The Little Giants (running for one of the last all-men’s colleges in the United States) have all seven men back from last year’s 21st place national squad.

As mentioned above, with Mike Woods retiring from Geneseo, the battle for the Atlantic will be even more emotionally tinged than usual. Co-top-ranked Geneseo/Cortland and No. 5 NYU (the site of perhaps the highest profile coaching change of the offseason, from Nick McDonough to Will Boylan-Pett) have combined to take seven of the last eight Atlantic titles.

A Closer Look: WOMEN’S Regional Team Rankings

Since 1999, New England has clearly established itself as the best DIII women’s region. In that time period, the region has won nine of the last thirteen national titles (between Amherst, Middlebury, and Williams), produced an astonishing 53% of the nation’s top-three team finishes, and never had a team miss the podium.

Preseason No. 1 Williams, No. 2 Middlebury, and No. 3 MIT all cracked the top five nationally last year. (In fact, the preseason regional top ten perfectly mirrors last year’s regional results, the only poll where that’s the case) More than any other region for either sex, watch those Nos. 6-10 slots for at-large bids coming out of New England.

Johns Hopkins has won the last two national championships, making them a clear choice for a preseason No. 1 ranking in the Mideast. The last nine Mideast Region championships have been won by Hopkins (2008-13) and preseason No. 2 Dickinson (2005-07); Haverford shares the No. 2 slot.

From 2005 to 2012, Washington (Mo.) and UW-Eau Claire won every women’s Midwest regional title. That hegemony was broken up last fall by preseason No. 1 Chicago; WashU sits at No. 2 in the preseason rankings.

The West’s Willamette is one of two regional No. 1 teams in the nation to return all seven of their runners from last year’s NCAA meet. After finishing second in the region and twelfth in the nation a year ago, the Bearcats look to end preseason No. 2 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps’ four-year reign as region champs.

The other team that returns all seven of their harriers from nationals is Central preseason No. 1 Carleton. Along with No. 2 St. Olaf, the two schools tipped for the Central’s two automatic bids are located across the Cannon River from each other in Northfield, Minn.