USTFCCCA News & Notes
Weekend College XC (DII/DIII) Recap: Williams Purple Valley Classic Underscores Eventful Weekend
By Kyle Terwillegar, USTFCCCA September 29, 2014   

Weekend College XC (DII/DIII) Recap: Williams Purple Valley Classic Underscores Eventful Weekend

NEW ORLEANS – As crazy as the NCAA Division I weekend was in cross country, Division DII and especially Division III had their own mayhem ongoing at the same time.

From big upsets to dominant performances, this weekend had it all.

Williams Purple Valley Classic

Results

As crazy as the Division I races at the Minnesota Roy Griak Invitational were – more on the DII and DIII action there later – the Williams Purple Valley Classic was just as wild for the Division III national scene.

Take the men’s race, for instance. The Colby men have finished in the bottom three of their NESCAC conference meet in nine of the past ten years, but their fifth-place showing a year ago may be a sign of good things to come.

Currently ranked No. 17, the Mules took down the best Division III field of the weekend, defeating both No. 6 Williams and No. 8 MIT, along with No. 21 Amherst, No. 29 Middlebury and No. 30 Tufts.

Led by Individual winner David Chelimo, who took the win over reigning National Athlete of the Week Colin Cotton, The Mules scored 55 points to beat, in this order, Williams (63), MIT (72), Amherst (89), Tufts (120) and Middlebury (152).

Williams had two of the top three finishers in Cotton and Bijan Mazaheri, but Colby also but two in the top 6 with Chelimo and sixth-place Jeff Hale and had three more in the top 17, to boot. Colby, Williams, MIT, and Amherst all had two top-10 finishers apiece.

The women’s race had its own fair share of upsets. Entering the weekend No. 2 in the nation, Williams struggled on its home course, finishing fourth with 115 points. Rather, it was No. 4 MIT that was the crème of the crop in Williamstown, Massachusetts.


The Engineers put the first two women across the line in Sarah Quinn (22:23.9 for 6k) and Maryann Gong, along with two more top-10 finishers, to score a mere 36 points to No. 8 Middlebury‘s 64 and No. 14 Tufts‘ 95. Only Tufts had as many as two top-10 finishers.

What Middlebury lacked in low sticks – the Panthers were led by fourth-place Alison Maxwell as its only top-10 finisher – it made up for in overall depth. The Panthers had five finishers among the top 20 and nearly a quarter of the top 40. Only MIT had as many as Middlebury in the top 20, but only managed one more top-40 finisher.

Back to Williams. Embodying the No. 2 team’s struggles was Hannah Cole, last year’s 29th-place finisher at NCAAs who finished 52nd on Saturday. Time will tell if this result is either an anomaly or an indicator for both Cole and the Ephs.

Minnesota Roy Griak

DI Results (GVSU): Men | Women
DII Results: Men | Women
DIII Results: Men | Women

The Division II and III action at Minnesota’s Roy Griak Invitational largely held to the form set by the National Coaches Polls, but there were upsets to be had here, as well.

In the Division I races, both the two-time defending national champion No. 1 Grand Valley State women and the No. 2 GVSU men finished 10th as the only DII squads in the 35- and 31-team fields, respectively. Kendra Foley finished 23rd overall in the women’s race.

The Division II Men’s Maroon race saw No. 22 UW-Parkside win the team title over No. 7 Augustana (S.D.), 90-99. Evan Lewandowski’s sixth-place finish led the way for the Rangers, who were the only team in the race with four guys among the top 25 finishers. Parkside put seven across the line before the final No. 5 scoring runners from all but Augustana and Central Missouri (receiving votes).

The UCM Mules finished fourth overall with 206 points, joining UW-Parkside as the only teams to have seven runners among the top 100 finishers. The top NCAA DII finisher was Robert Peterson of MSU-Billings, who was edged out at the line by former Augustana All-American Paul Yak in 25:42.2 to finish 10 seconds behind winner Matt Johnson of Regina.

The battle for the DII women’s Central Region began at Griak on Saturday, with the first round going to No. 4 Minnesota Duluth over No. 7 Augustana (S.D.), 74-97.

The Bulldogs are both fast and young: overall race winner sophomore Samantha Rivard (22:02.8 over 6k) was one of three UMD runners in the top 10 – all three of whom were of sophomore or frosh status – and of their top seven runners, only one was in her senior year of eligibility. UMD’s top seven runners all finished among the top 50 finishers in the 320+ runner race.

Augustana showed similar depth and youth with two first-year competitors in the top 10, led by third-place Leah Seivert 20 seconds behind Rivard.

In a surprising third-place was unranked Northern Michigan, which scored 115 points. The Wildcats’ one-through-five pack ran tighter than either UMD or Augustana, with only 21 spots and less than a minute separating 12th-place frosh Kameron Burmeister and fellow frosh Vivian Hett in 33rd.

No. 23 U-Mary finished fifth overall with 186 points, just ahead of unranked Southwest Baptist with 191.

On the Division III front, both the men’s and women’s National Coaches Polls will likely be shaken up a bit from the results of Griak. In the women’s race, No. 14 UW-La Crosse lived up to its billing as the top-ranked team in the field, but only narrowly as it escaped No. 24 St. Thomas (Minn.) and No. 19 St. Olaf, 60-69-76.

UWL also got the individual win as Laura Mead crossed the line 13 seconds clear of former National Athlete of the Week Erin Statz of – who else – St. Thomas in 22:39.9 on the 6k course. Both La Crosse and St. Thomas showed similar depth as both squads put seven runners across the line among the top 35 individual finishers, and their Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 runners came in within three spots of one another.

Notably, St. Olaf ran nearly 40 women but Noelle Olson – the top returner (third-place) from last year’s NCAA Championships – was not among them.

Finishing fourth in the team standings was unranked UW-Oshkosh with 107 points, ahead of No. 29 Wartburg, which was also without a former All-American in Alana Enabnit. The junior has finished in the top four in each of the past two Griak races.

UW-Oshkosh’s men were the first team out of the top-35 National Coaches Polls last week, but we anticipate that’ll change after their very close runner-up performance at Griak to No. 10 UW-La Crosse. Led by overall winner Jordan Carpenter (25:56.2 over 8k), the Titans scored 46 points, just three behind UWL’s winning 43 points.

Runner-up Alex Ciesielski of UWL led three Eagles in the top 10, five in the top 20 and eight in the top 30. UWO showed great depth up front with a pair of top-six finishers and five in the top 15.

UWO displaced the only other nationally ranked team in the field by a wide margin, as No. 28 Wartburg was third with 82 points.

Division III Pre-Nationals

Results

What was the big takeaway from the Division III Pre-National Invitational at Wilmington (Ohio), the site of the upcoming NCAA Championships on November 22? No. 1 North Central (Ill.) is very, very good. The Cardinals, one of five ranked teams in the meet, decimated the field with individual winner Troy Kelleher (23:36.3 over 6k) leading five Cardinals in the top six for a near-perfect 16-point score. NCC accounted for exactly half of the top 20 individual finishers.

Post by North Central College Athletics.

Finishing a distant runner-up was No. 27 SUNY Geneseo with 91 points, followed by No. 13 Loras with 103 and No. 16 NYU with 135.

The No. 7 SUNY Geneseo women were equally dominant in the women’s race, scoring 34 points to finish well ahead of runner-up Mount Union (receiving votes) with 155 and No. 17 NYU with 160. Led by the top two individual finishers in Cassie Goodman (20:54.6 over 6k) and Alyssa Knott, the Knights accounted for a third of the top 15 individual finishers and put seven across the finish line among the top 20 finishers. No other team had more than two top-20 finishers.

Stanford Invitational

Results

For the men, Division II No. 4 Chico State finished fourth overall out of 39 teams at Stanford with 124 points, just shy of the team win behind Washington State (91), UC Santa Barbara (93) and host Stanford (105). The Wildcats, led by 14th-place Brandon Tyler and three other top-30 finishers, had the best 1-7 spread of any team in the meet, with seven men crossing the line in the top 70 of the 362-man race.

The next-best team in Division II was No. 16 UC San Diego in seventh with 296 points. The top Division II finishers was sixth-place Valentin Pepiot of Academy of Art.

On the Division III scene, No. 18 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps finished 11th overall with 360 points, just ahead of the next-best squad in 13th-place No. 20 Pomona Pitzer with 385 points. CMS also had the top DIII individual finisher in 31st-place Zorg Loustalet.

It was a showdown of DII top-10 teams in the women’s race in Palo Alto, as No. 5 Chico State edged out No. 9 Simon Fraser by just one spot in the team standings. The Wildcats were 13th in the 40-team field with 377 points, while the Clan was 14th just seven points back. No. 14 UC San Diego filed in right behind in 15th with 403 points.

Chico had the advantage in low sticks, led by 31st-place Quetta Peinado, while the Clan ran a tighter pack one through five, led by 37th-place Rebecca Bassett. It was UC San Diego, however, that had the best one-through-four grouping, with 74th-place Corinne Hinkle leading four Tritons within 14 spots of one another.

The top DII finisher overall was 22nd-place Staci Foster of Azusa Pacific.

No. 17 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps was the lone DIII ranked team in the field, finishing 17th with 457 points. The Athenas were led by the top overall DIII finisher in 45th-place Sara Mostatabi.

Other DII Top-10 Action

The No. 5 Metro State women won the Small University division of the Oklahoma State Cowboy Jamboree, 34-45-49, over Wayland Baptist and Eastern New Mexico. Breanna Hemming, a returning national top-10 finisher, finished fourth overall to lead the Roardrunners, who ran without All-American Janelle Lincks. Results

The No. 9 Lock Haven men won their home LHU Open with 43 points over runner-up Susquehanna’s 58. Results

The No. 10 Winona State women won the Saint Mary’s (Minn.) No Limits Invitational with a perfect score of 15 and 12 of the top 15 individual finishers. Results

Other DIII Top-10 Action

As the lone Division III team competing at the highly competitive Boston College Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown, the two-time defending women’s NCAA Champion No. 1 Johns Hopkins finished 16th of 21. The Blue Jays ran without multiple-time All-American Hannah Oneda. The No. 9 JHU men finished 14th out of 19 squads. Results

Both the No. 3 women and No. 4 men of St. Lawrence won their home Ronald Hoffmann Invitational. The women edged out the University of Ottawa by eight points, 25-33, as Cassia Hameline took the individual win (22:07.8), while the men earned a big, 20-60, victory over the Ottawa Lions T.F. Club with eight of the top nine finishers. Results

The No. 7 UW-Platteville men did not run their top squad at the Augustana (Ill.) Brissman/Lundeen Invitational and finished ninth. Results

The No. 10 Calvin women dominated the MIAA Jamoboree at Kalamazoo College, winning 20-59 over rival No. 20 Hope. All five scoring women for the Knights finished among the top eight, led by winner Cassie Vince (22:29 over 6k), runner-up Lauren Strohnbehn and third-place Sarah Danner. Results