Division II XC Championships Preview – Team Races

LOUISVILLE, KY – Fans of college cross country who have been longing for some XC since the NCAA Divisions I and III championships two weekends ago, fret not: Division II has you covered with its championships on Saturday.

Without a unanimous No. 1 team from the USTFCCCA National Coaches’ Poll present in either the men’s or women’s team title races, plus a host of runners for both genders who could claim the individual crown, Saturday’s action at the E.P. "Tom Sawyer" State Park in Louisville, Kentucky, is sure to be exciting.

The weather may not fully cooperate – it has rained for most of the week and will continue to do so through Saturday, leading to soft and muddy conditions on the course – but at least the temperature has improved from the freezing range it had been for most of the week to the 50s by race time.

Either way, everyone has to deal with the same conditions (except for those at home watching LIVE on NCAA.com). Here’s a look at those team battles.

(Once you’re done here, check out the individual previews for both the men’s and women’s races here.)

MEN’S TEAM PREVIEW

No. 1 Grand Valley State and No. 2 Adams State are both strong contenders, but are both also vulnerable. And No. 3 Colorado Mines is itching for an upset. Third try is the charm?

On the Division II cross country scene, whenever the Adams State men aren’t No. 1, that’s big news. Last Tuesday was a big news day, as Grand Valley State took over the top spot in the National Coaches’ Poll for the first time in program history.

Grand Valley State men following GLIAC Championship.

Based on the results of the poll, it would be more fair to call GVSU and Adams State co-favorites (the two squads are separated by just two points), but both have faced their fair shares of adversity this season.

As dominant as GVSU has been this year, the Lakers do have a troublesome result on their schedule with a loss to 2014 NCAA Division III team champion North Central (Ill.) at UW-Oshkosh in mid-October. Since then, they’ve rolled to titles at the GLIAC and Midwest Regional meets – and, in all fairness, GVSU did beat NCC at Notre Dame several weeks prior – but a loss to the Division III champions doesn’t necessarily bode well with a showdown against two-time defending DII champ Adams State looming.

Adams State likewise hasn’t lost to any DII competition (or DIII competition, for that matter) this year, but the Grizzlies haven’t been getting any style points this year. RMAC rival No. 3 Colorado Mines came within mere points of taking down the Grizzlies both at RMACs and the South Central Regional, and their third-place showing at Paul Short (albeit an early season meet) exposed some flaws in the Grizzlies’ armor.

Kevin Batt and Tabor Stevens of Adams State going 1-2 over 5000 meters at the 2014 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

The best part of this match-up? The two squads are built very differently. Adams State could very well put three runners in the top 10 (and perhaps pull a Cheserek-Jenkins and sweep the top two individual spots with defending champ Tabor Stevens and 2012 runner-up Kevin Batt), but lack the depth that has propelled it to its dominant team wins over the past decade. Consider that at the Paul Short, RMAC and South Central meets, ASU’s No. 5 runner finished about a minute and a half behind its No. 1 (granted, those No. 1 runners are very good).

GVSU, on the other hand, does have a strong frontrunner in Alan Peterson, who has a UW-Oshkosh win and two more runner-up finishes to his name, but the Lakers’ biggest strength is its depth. Only about 40 seconds separated Peterson from GVSU’s No. 5 in each of the past two races, both of which were dominant wins at GLIACs and the Midwest Regional.

Consider Colorado Mines, the 2012 national team runner-up, the hybrid version of these two teams. They may not quite be at the level of Adams State’s Stevens and Batt, but the Orediggers’ 1-2-3 punch of three-time All-American Phil Schneider, two-time honoree Derek Alcorn and Marty Andrie have given ASU fits over the past month. Plus, at the RMAC meet, CSM’s No. 4 and 5 runners were superior to ASU’s No. 4 and 5.

Also, consider this: Colorado Mines coach Chris Siemers is a former Western State runner, meaning the Adams State rivalry will be working from multiple angles.

Of course, lest we forget, Adams State actually did lose the RMAC a year ago to Western State before going on to a dominant NCAA team title.

Contenders for the Men’s Podium

Colorado Mines was mentioned in the first section, but based on the final National Coaches’ Poll, wherever the Orediggers are mentioned, so too should be No. 4 Chico State. After all, like GVSU and ASU, only two points separate Colorado Mines and Chico State in the poll.

Chico State, which had been No. 3 in the country for most of the season prior to Colorado Mines’ pair of near-upsets has yet to lose to a Division II team this season.

Led by CCAA champ Alex McGuirk, Chico State took down a host of DII West Coast teams this season as the top DII team at the Stanford Invitational and Santa Clara Bronco Invitational and comfortable wins at the CCAA Championships and West Regional (a 30-53 win over No. 6 Alaska Anchorage). Saturday will be the Wildcats’ first test against non-West competition this season.

Chico State is one of three consecutive teams in the National Coaches’ Poll that has never finished higher than third at the NCAA Championships. Chico finished third three times, most recently in 2005 and 2008.

No. 5 Augustana (S.D.) has looked exceptional since the return of Harald Karbo for the NSIC Championships in dominant wins at NSICs and the Central Region. The Vikings were third a year ago.

No. 6 Alaska Anchorage was third in 2012 behind national champion Micah Chelimo. The Seawolves lost 30-53 to No. 4 Chico State in the West Regional, but regional results don’t always translate to the national level. Likely more telling are their dominant victories in the GNAC and the Western Washington Invitational.

While those three programs all have experience on the podium, that’s not true for the No. 7 Malone Pioneers. Not at the NCAA Division II level, anyway. This is just their second year as a full member in the NCAA, but they ended their NAIA tenure with three national titles in a row from 2007-09. Led by the duo of Ryan Roush and Andrew Trusty, Malone finished runner-up in the Midwest to knock off former No. 5 Southern Indiana.

Rounding out the top 10 and hoping to leapfrog a number of teams in the rankings are No. 8 Lock Haven (in position for its best-ever NCAA finish, 9th in 2004), No. 9 Western State (trying to avoid its worst-ever finish at the NCAA DII Championships, 6th in 2012) and No. 10 Southern Indiana, which will look to regain its top-five standing from earlier this season led by national title contenders Tyler Pence and Johnnie Guy.

WOMEN’S TEAM PREVIEW

The Title Battle: Grand Valley State vs. Adams State

The favorites for the men’s NCAA Division II cross country team title all have planted some seeds of doubt throughout the season. The only things the two-time defending national champion No. 1 Grand Valley State women have planted in 2014 are metaphorical GVSU flags in the ground following dominant performances in a string of wins.

Grand Valley State women following GLIAC Championship.

With Allyson Winchester going for her fourth All-America honor, Jessica Janecke and Hannah Osborn going for their third, and Kendra Foley and Jordan Chester going for their second, there’s no shortage of experience or talent on this GVSU roster. Winchester, Janecke and Foley are all returning top-11 finishers from a year ago, and all have taken their turn as the Lakers’ No. 1 runner at least once in 2014. For reference, no women’s team has put three in the top 10 since Western State in 2004, and only twice (Adams State in 1999 and Western State in 2002) have four runners from the same team been in the top 10 since NCAA Division II first contested the 6k in 1998.

With that group, how low could the Lakers go? Their 54 point total to win last year was nearly twice as low as their 101 to win in 2012. With five All-Americans returning from last year, they have a chance to approach the lowest scores since the turn of the century: 38, 46 and 43 by Western State in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and 31 by Adams State in 2004. All of those meets had only 24 teams, compared to 32 over the past two years.

Comfortable wins at Notre Dame (98 points over No. 3 Minnesota Duluth), UW-Oshkosh (58 over No. 3 UMD), GLIACs (40 over No. 5 Hillsdale) and Midwest Regionals (34 over No. 5 Hillsdale without GLIAC Champion Kendra Foley, who will be running) have earned the Lakers favorite status for their fourth national title in five years.

Favorite status, but not unanimous favorite status.

Sitting at No. 2 with the only one of the eight first-place votes not cast for GVSU is Adams State, last year’s runner-up. A disappointing early season performance at the Paul Short Run in which they lost to three-time defending DIII national champion Johns Hopkins raised some red flags, but a completely dominant performance at the RMAC Championships called for a lowering of said flags.

Behind the trio of last year’s national sixth-place finisher Lauren Martin, Rachel Kresl and Jenna Thurman that swept the top three spots, plus Maura O’Brien and Melissa Roberts in fifth and seventh, the Grizzlies scored a meager 18 points to rival No. 7 Western State‘s 69. ASU was just as impressive at the South Central Regional, scoring 21 points to Western State’s 99. The Grizzlies had seven of the top 13 finishers in that race, led by the 1-2-3 trio of O’Brien, Kresl and Martin.

The Fight for the Podium

Anything can happen in cross country – particularly when the weather becomes an equalizing factor as it may on Saturday with a rain-soaked, muddy course and the potential for rain. But the fact that Grand Valley has defeated No. 3 Minnesota Duluth, No. 4 Augustana (S.D.), No. 5 Hillsdale and No. 9 Wayne State (Mich.), and Adams has taken down No. 7 Western State and No. 10 Colorado Mines, likely puts all these teams – plus No. 6 Simon Fraser and No. 8 Chico State – into a second tier of squads that will try to possibly crack the top two but will certainly challenge for the podium.

Outside of a pair of losses to GVSU, no other team has outright beaten No. 3 Minnesota Duluth. No. 4 Augustana won a tiebreaker against the Bulldogs at NSICs, but UMD does have three more head-to-head wins over the Vikings at Roy Griak, UW-Oshkosh and the Central Region.

The Bulldogs will depend not only on Central Region and Griak champ Samantha Rivard to replicate and improve upon her eighth-place finish as a freshman at this meet a year ago, but also a host of other young runners to do the same. The next two runners in the Bulldogs’ scoring lineup will likely be frosh Emilee Trost and sophomore Breanna Colbenson, not necessarily in that order.

Speaking of young runners, Augustana has their own pair of frosh low sticks in Leah Seivert and Annie Kruse who led the Vikings to that tiebreak win at NSICs and a runner-up Central Region finish, but also a fifth-place showing behind GVSU, UMD, Johns Hopkins and DIII MIT at UW-Oshkosh.

Emily Oren of Hillsdale

Hillsdale has been steadily improving all year long, culminating in a runner-up Midwest Regional performance that saw the Chargers come closer to GVSU than any other team has this year (disclaimer, GVSU ran without GLIAC champ Foley). Region champ Emily Oren gives Hillsdale a formidable presence up front, and the Chargers have a strong pack behind her that has only fallen to GVSU this year at the Division II level.

No. 6 Simon Fraser hasn’t yet faced any of these teams, but the Clan has been adept this season at prevailing against adversity. SFU won the GNAC by a single point over No. 11 Alaska Anchorage and two over No. 23 Western Washington; and nine points over No. 8 Chico State at the West Regional. That West Regional also saw Simon Fraser, led by third-place Rebecca Bassett, defeat Anchorage by 31 points and Western Washington by 82.

No. 7 is a strange position in which to see Western State, which has finished in the top four 21 of the 22 times it has participated as a team. Only in 2007 did WSCU finish sixth to miss the podium. The RMAC and South Central Regional runners-up have a good pack – Amy Penn, Torie Weprin, Cali Antolini, Alicja Konieczek and Sophie Seward all finished within 15 seconds of one another at RMACs, but all were outside the top 10.