St. Lawrence Men & Women Move to No. 1 in Division III Cross Country Regional Team Rankings

NEW ORLEANS—Since voting on the preseason poll in August, Division III coaches have had three weeks to evaluate results from across the nation for the first Regional Team Rankings of the season, released Tuesday afternoon by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA).

While the status quo remained largely intact, Tuesday’s rankings saw three new regional No. 1s installed ahead of Wednesday’s release of the National Coaches Polls.

Two of those No. 1s are the St. Lawrence men and women. Both squads notched upset wins over the national No. 2 women and No. 3 men of Williams (though missing several key women’s runners) and national No. 9 NYU women at the Saratoga Invitational to jump several slots – three for the women and two for the men – to the top of the Atlantic Region.

Both preseason Atlantic Region favorite SUNY Geneseo and NYU dropped one spot in both the men’s and women’s region rankings to No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. The men and women of Williams remained atop the New England Region.

The third new regional No. 1 are the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men in the West. The Stags leapfrogged SCIAC rivals Pomona-Pitzer and Occidental (which held out its top runners) after beating both at the UC Riverside Invite. Those two both slid one spot to Nos. 2 and 3.

Four men’s teams jumped three places; the two biggest gainers of either sex were the women of Vassar (up a whopping six spots in the Atlantic) and Aurora (up four in the Midwest).

Men’s teams making their season debut in the regional polls are UW-Stevens Point (Midwest), Hamline (Central), Keene State (New England), UT-Tyler (South/Southeast), and Elizabethtown (Mideast). 

For the women, the list of debutants is much longer, and goes: RIT and Stevens Institute (Atlantic); Lebanon Valley, Susquehanna, Gettysburg, Misericordia and Waynesburg (Mideast); Loras and St. Thomas (Minn.) (Central); St. Norbert and Augustana (Ill.) (Midwest); Washington & Lee and Roanoke (South/Southeast); and UC Santa Cruz, and Redlands (West).

The USTFCCCA regional rankings archive only goes back to 2010, but that’s the first appearance for the Hamline men and the women of RIT, Stevens, Misericordia, and Waynesburg during that span.

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

USTFCCCA Regional Cross Country Rankings are determined subjectively by a single member coach in each respective region, or by a panel of coaches in the 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.