Goodbye September

The D3GD group chat was blowing up with results from three big meets this past weekend: the Blugold Invite in Wisconsin, the Lehigh Paul Short Run in Pennsylvania, and the Dan Huston Invitational in Iowa. Dominating victories, small-school upsets, and impressive pack times were among some of the most notable results across the country this past weekend. Here’s a closer look at what happened in D3 XC this weekend.

Blugold Invite

The big Blugold showdown up North reminded us of two major points: Whitewater men are a top team in the nation and Fiona Smith is really, really good.

In the absence of La Crosse’s varsity squad, the spotlight turned to the Whitewater Warhawks, who smoked their northern competition when they put six men in front of runners-up St. Olaf’s third finisher. D3 standout Christian Patzka was the overall champion, leading the way to five top-10 finishers for the Warhawks. Gunner Schlender joined Patzka under 25 minutes, duo Justin Krause and Dan Anderson cruised in 10 seconds later, and Craig Hundley rounded out the team score just three seconds after that. Whitewater posted a total spread of 42 seconds and also showed some depth when sixth man Nick Hardin finished within a minute of Patzka.

With a squad that deep and tightly packed, Whitewater has the ability to contend for a podium spot in November. Anticipation as to where Whitewater will stack up to other programs grows as we near interregional weekend. The Warhawks will return to action in two weeks at the Augustana Interregional Invitational.

Another impressive performance from the men’s race came from St. Olaf’s Will Kelly, who took a near runner-up finish to Patzka. Kelly has had somewhat of a breakout season, placing no worse than third since competition began on the first of September. Two weeks ago, he broke the course record at his home St. Olaf Invitational. The previous record was held by XC national champion Grant Wintheieser, indicating a promising trajectory for Kelly. This past weekend he beat Augsburg standout Mohammed Bati head-to-head following Bati’s victory at Running of the Cows. Bati has also finished no worse than third so far this season, indicating both are names to watch heading into interregional weekend in two weeks.

An athlete with no losses yet this season and perhaps one of the biggest names in D3 cross country right now is Fiona Smith. The St. Benedict star dominated the women’s race, winning over 15th-place All-American Hannah Preisser of Carleton by a minute and 42 seconds. Smith was truly in a race of her own.

The most refreshing part about Smith’s performances this season is each one of them have been comfortably controlled from the front at an honest effort. Where many of the nation’s top male runners have eased into the season, hanging back with teammates for workouts or taking weekends off, Smith has taken charge herself in every race she’s been in, showing repeatedly that she is the fittest woman in D3 XC right now. Likely to employ a similar strategy at the national meet where she goes to the front and creates a widening gap, we are so excited to see what Smith can push herself to do. In an interview on our social channels, she cited training mostly alone as a tool that helps her execute this strategy effectively (and also reveals that she has never eaten at Taco Bell before!).

Carleton dominated the team race, sweeping places two through four and rounding out their score with the 12th and 19th place finishers. Their 67-second split could certainly be tighter, but by beating North region teams like St .Olaf and Eau Claire, they gain some confidence that they can get the automatic qualifying spot from this region come November.

Paul Short

In a full day of racing at Lehigh Paul Short, some of the most impressive performances came from La Crosse’s Ethan Gregg and Isaac Wegner, NYU’s Grace Richardson and Morgan Uhlhorn, Geneseo’s Penelope Greene, the men’s teams from La Crosse and Carnegie Mellon, and the women’s teams from Geneseo and NYU.

One of the most challenging aspects of analyzing results from Paul Short is that teams are often spread out across several events, making their performances hard to compare. To make it easier, we combined results from all races to see who the top teams of the day were.

The indisputable D3 champions of the day were La Crosse men and SUNY Geneseo women, who both posted impressive performances in the Gold race. La Crosse beat several reputable D1 programs by placing seventh overall, while Geneseo placed 22nd overall ahead of several minor big-school programs.

La Crosse was led by Ethan Gregg, who placed third overall behind Penn State’s Evan Dorenkamp and Navy’s Murphy Smith. Dorenkamp is a D1 1500 meter All-American, holding PRs of 3:55 in the mile and 3:40 in the 1500. With sub-4 closing speed, this midD runner likely welcomed the 2k less of racing from the typical D1 10k course. Smith had somewhat of a breakout race–his 5k PR is 14:17, 25 seconds slower than Gregg’s, and his 10k PR is a full two minutes slower. Though it is not often that D1 runners consider beating D3 runners to be a victory, beating someone with a resume like Gregg’s proves to be a noteworthy feat.

Gregg returns to action this season on somewhat of a revenge tour. After a bogus false start in the 5k outdoors and a somewhat disappointing fourth place finish after leading a sizable portion of the race in cross country last year, Gregg heads into the 2023-24 season as one of the names to beat. He only just started racing in larger, multi-divisional races last spring, most notably in the Stanford Invitational and Drake Relays. Paul Short now joins this list of races and further proves the notion that division does not matter. We look forward to seeing where else Gregg can shake it up with the big dogs this coming year.

Someone who sometimes gets overshadowed but deserves a spotlight himself is Gregg’s counterpart Isaac Wegner, who finished just eight places behind Gregg in the 400-person race at Paul Short. Every successful cross team has a notable duo, and La Crosse’s is Gregg and Wegner. Last year, Wegner was 12th in the nation in cross country, a feat he looks to improve upon this year. Doing so will certainly help the Eagles, who currently rank in podium contention. Behind low sticks Gregg and Wegner, the squad of Grant Matthai, Adam Loenser, and Joey Sullivan finished within 34 seconds of one another. Keeping this pack time tight will be key, as will closing the additional 23-second gap from Matthai to Wegner.

Another team with a notable finish at Paul Short was the Carnegie Mellon Tartans. Though La Crosse packed three runners ahead of Carnegie’s first finisher, their pack time from one to five was just 31 seconds. Running in this tight of a pack in a massive race like Paul Short is an excellent way to simulate the national meet. Now, all the Tartan squad needs to do is get this pack as close to the front as possible to contend for a podium spot.

The women’s races at Paul Short showed three clear podium contenders: SUNY Geneseo, NYU, and the never-to-be-counted-out Johns Hopkins. Geneseo, Hopkins, and La Crosse battled it out in the Gold race, taking the hit of scores in the high hundreds in this 400-person race. In a race that is crowded with so many unfamiliar teams and faces, it can be hard to tell where your own team is in the race. Each team held their own, however, again gaining valuable practice navigating ways to form tight packs in large fields.

Geneseo emerged the stars, led by top D3 finisher of the race Penelope Greene, who placed 47th overall amidst lots of big-school talent. Greene notably beat Hopkins’s Sara Stephenson by eight places and four seconds. Stephenson was ninth at nationals last year and has gone on this year to win her first meet and place fourth in her second, both performances that outshined many big-school athletes. Greene did not run in the regional meet or national meet last year, and in 2021, was just four spots away from All-American status. Beating names like Stephenson put Greene on a promising trajectory to the top.

Behind Greene, Lilly Fowler-Conner, Rachel Hirschkind, Kaitlyn Grossman, and Jillian O’Rourke composed Geneseo’s scorers. Their spread was a minute and 16 seconds, a high pack time, but one that was saved by Greene’s low-stick finish. They also managed to pack three runners ahead of Hopkins’s second runner, which ultimately gave Geneseo the winning advantage. Hopkins posted a pack time of a minute and seven seconds, a tighter group than Geneseo, but one where finishing places were too spread out for the Blue Jays to pull off the win. As stated before, however, never count this team out for a team title in November.

The women’s team from NYU showed their chops in the less-competitive Brown race, a race that allowed them to better find each other up front and capture a victory. This strategy worked in their favor, as they had four of their five scorers all finish in the top 20 of the race. They even beat several large-school squads and D3 South-region powerhouse Lynchburg in the process. Grace Richardson and Morgan Uhlhorn were an impressive one-two punch for NYU, capturing third and fourth place, respectively, within just seven seconds of each other. Behind this duo, Kate Cochran took 11th, Vivian Kane 16th, and Olivia Jackson 35th, just a minute and 13 seconds elapsing from the first to fifth runners. Their victory likely helped this young team build some vital confidence as they look to the second half of the season and hunt down a spot on the national podium.

Dan Huston Invitational

One of the most exciting matchups to happen in all of the Midwest this weekend happened at the Dan Huston Invitational between Simpson’s Spencer Moon and Wartburg’s Christopher Collet. The pair finished within six seconds of one another at the national meet last year, Collet taking the upper hand with his seventh place finish and Moon rounding out the top 10. Moon came into the weekend undefeated, and Collet had yet to complete a race this season, so we knew Saturday’s match up would be one that kept us on the edge of our seats.

The pair traded off leads early on as they led a pack of Wartburg runners. Moon and Indian Hills’s Brandon Ford were the lone pair not donning Wartburg jerseys in the lead pack as varsity members Lance Sobaski, Shane Erb, and Jack Kinzer attached to the back of Collet. Eventually, Collet and Moon would separate from the pack, creating a mono-versus-mono race.

With a decisive move, Moon created a gap on Collet that gave him the lead at 5k. Collet, however, had a card of his own to play, and that card involved moving hard the last 3k. With 800 meters to go in this 8,000-meter race, Collet had caught Moon and overtaken him. He cruised to a quick finish, taking the overall victory in 24:46. Moon held on for runner-up, crossing the finish line eight seconds later.

Behind Collet, Erb and Kinzer held on for third and fourth. Sobaski fell to 13th, but fourth-man Jacob Green stepped up in the second half to claim eighth. These finishes gave Wartburg a low score of 29 with a 44-second spread from one to five. They posted a significant victory over Central College, who packed four into the top 20 but lacked a close-finishing fifth. Loras came in third, led by DMR and mile All-American Ryan Harvey.

Wartburg women showed strength in their pack in the 6,000-meter race. Their top-five scoring athletes all finished within the top 14 led by the one-two punch from Lexi Brown and Shaelyn Hostager. The pair crossed the finish line within five seconds of each other, the latter beating Central College’s Caroline McMartin by a lean. For it was Brown, Hostager, and McMartin who commanded the race by 5k. The trio formed a gap over the rest of the race that spanned a full 40 seconds by the finish. The American Rivers Conference Championship matchup between these three, as well as Aubrie Fisher, the DMR and steeplechase national champion and 14th-place XC All-American, will be one that is highly anticipated.

Fisher finished ninth overall as Wartburg’s fourth finisher, despite having led the team all year last year. With all of October and part of November to go yet, plugging Fisher in closer to Brown and Hostager will produce the result we know this team is capable of producing. The minute-and-46-second spread they posted this weekend is likely larger than this squad were hoping for, but they have lots of season left to fine tune.

Central College finished runners-up to Wartburg by just 26 points and, in doing so, showed they have the chops to run with the nation’s best. Look for them to make a push at receiving a bid to the national meet out of the Midwest region, one of the hottest regions in women’s cross country right now.

In other meet news…

North Central has entered the chat.

The #2 ranked Cardinal men stepped up to the plate this weekend at the Live in Lou XC Classic facing off against some of the best D2 teams in the country. The Cardinals finished an impressive fifth in a field that featured six ranked D2 teams and few regionally ranked D1 teams. To finish this well is not out of left field when your squad features three outdoor 5k All-Americans in Max Svienty, Connor Riss, and Braden Nicholson, as well as 10k qualifier Andrew Guimond. This is a seasoned crew of veterans hungry to get their team back on the top step for the first time since 2018. North Central would come away with some wins to be proud of, they would knock off three ranked D2 teams, handily beating Azusa Pacific (17th), Lee (TN.) (9th), and Pittsburgh State (22nd).

Svienty, who was the fifth-place All-American outdoors and fourth-place All-American indoors, led the way for the Cardinals and for D3, finishing sixth overall amidst lots of big-school talent, including Jan Lukas-Becker, last year’s D2 10k national champion. We named him the D3GD Runner of the Week for his performance–catch him on the podcast here.

In D3 alumni news, 1500 and cross country All-American Cal Yackin and nine-time D3 All-American Ana Tucker took to the course in Louisville donning brand-new Grand Valley State uniforms. Yackin placed 27th overall as GVSU’s fifth finisher, and Tucker finished ninth overall as GVSU’s third finisher. Both the Grand Valley men’s and women’s teams are nationally ranked in D2–the men second and the women first–and we love seeing prominent D3 alums helping to make this ranking happen.

As the calendar turns now to October, the stakes start to get higher. Interregional weekend and conference meets are just a few of the most notable competitions to look forward to in this upcoming month. Check back in with D3GD for all of your up-to-date D3 XC coverage.