If you’re like me, you’re still combing through the weekend’s results to find nuggets of cross country wisdom that will hopefully come in handy as the season moves towards its championship portion. The two-day circus that is the Wisco/Pre-Nats weekend is useful insofar as it can show who is trending upward against legit competition heading into the post-season, but one should always proceed with caution when analyzing huge outlier performances, as they can signal either a career day that isn’t likely to be replicated, or a terrible one that proven athletes/teams are sure to shake off. 

 

That being said, it’s fun to take off the “what does this mean for NCAAs?” lens and just appreciate the greatest weekend of the regular season for what it is- four races with all the hype of a championship meet without the immense pressure of one. Not to say that these meets weren’t critical for a lot of teams, they certainly were, but the races in Madison and Louisville have the benefit of not being make-or-break while offering the competition level of a meet that is. 

 

Consider the four individual winners at these two races. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume not a single person in the universe picked all four of the athletes who took titles this weekend, Marc Scott and Allie Ostrander (Wisco), Thomas Curtin and Erin Clark (Pre-Nats), to actually win in their respective races. Particularly Curtin and Ostrander, who impressed not only by winning, but also in the manner that they did it, were not expected to each take down the #1 ranked individual on their way to victory this weekend. But expectations and predictions be damned, this weekend was racing at it’s finest, with studs and duds still to be had. 

 

Here are this week’s winners and losers:
 

While their top four runners receive all the attention (and for good reason: the “Fab Four” have averaged an 8-second spread in their first two races), the most impressive development for the top-ranked Lobos has been the marked improvement of their 5th runner, Harvard transfer Molly Renfer. The Brit has been the lynchpin to New Mexico’s two dominating performances, first at Notre Dame and now at Wisco, as the Lady Lobos are producing team scores that would make the Colorado men blush. 

 

Joe Franklin’s squad scored 32 points this weekend in Madison, 55 less than previous Wisco Invite low-score record-holders Michigan State from 2014, who went on to dominate at NCAAs one month later. The quartet of Frerichs, Auckland, Wright, and Thackery have been as good as advertised, if not better, but not even Franklin could have expected Renfer to be finishing top-10 at Wisco like she did on Friday. Just one year ago while competing for Harvard, Renfer was 128th at Wisconsin, leading her team to a 34th place finish. Now she’s being counted on to lock down the Lobos’ small spread as they bulldoze through their competition. As they say, what a difference a year makes. 

 

“It’s just been great to have good teammates to run alongside, they push me everyday at practice. We just go out there and have fun,” Renfer said afterwards. Yes Molly, I imagine steamrolling the NCAA with three newcomers in your top five is quite fun. So much fun, in fact, that the Lobos were happy to show off their newly-acquired dance skills post-race:
 

When you’re this good, you have time to master the “Peel The Avocado,” apparently. 

 

Here’s a stat from Friday that made me spill my coffee: the Lobos could have scored all seven of their runners against every other team’s five and still won the meet. Renfer’s fellow Harvard transfer Whitney Thornburg was 50th at Wisco (after finishing 152nd in 2014), while Heleene Tambet (who scored on New Mexico’s 3rd place team last year, mind you) was 73rd. All seven Lobos combined to score just 155 points, 33 less than runner-up Arkansas had with five. 

 

The fight at the Big Dance is for 2nd (see what I did there?)
 

After splitting the running world along pro-jog/anti-jog lines two weeks ago at Greater Louisville, the Wisconsin men were back in the headlines once more this weekend at their home meet, only this time it was for laying an egg and finishing 17th at Wisco. The fresh Badgers figured to contend with eventual champion Syracuse for the team title, but instead they lost a tiebreaker with conference rival Indiana, who happened to be the third Big 10 team to beat the Badgers on Friday. That’s not how the fourth-ranked team in the country is supposed to perform at their home meet. 

 

“We’ve got to figure out what’s wrong and fix it,” Byrne told UWBadgers.com after the race. 

 

Part of “what’s wrong” is that the Badgers were without the services of Ryan Kromer and Carl Hirsch, who were each a part of Wisconsin’s 10th place team at NCAAs last fall. Hirsch reportedly did suit up on Friday, only to drop out, but Wisco clearly needs both of these sophomores back on form very soon if they plan on successfully defending their Big 10 title in two weeks. Both Kromer and Hirsch, plus fellow sophomore Joe Hardy, were top-20 at conference a year ago as freshmen, but a repeat of that seems very unlikely as Hardy bottomed out to 159th on Friday. 

 

On the bright side, Wisconsin has two reliable low-sticks right now in Malachy Schrobilgen and Morgan McDonald, who were 5th and 10th, respectively. We knew the junior Schrobilgen would be this solid- he was 10th at NCAAs last fall and will go for his third straight Big 10 title on November 1st, but now the Aussie McDonald has proven he’s a legitimate top-20 NCAA contender as well just a year after finishing 75th in Terre Haute. McDonald was the first of the four Badger freshmen that finished top-20 at the Big 10 XC Championships in 2014, and now he’s trying to pick up their slack as he’s the only one to have any success thus far in year two.

 

Make no mistake, Friday’s result in Madison was a disaster for the Badgers, but if they handle it right, it could also be the wake-up call they need to get things moving in the right direction. Hardy seemingly just had an off day since he was 38th at Wisco as a freshman, and it’s more than likely that he’ll be much improved at conference. If he can’t, however, and the duo of Kromer/Hirsch still aren’t ready to go, the Badgers could find themselves in a do-or-die scenario at Regionals. 

I had to combine these two for the sake of word count, but they both certainly deserve their own section. I’ll start with Ostrander.

 

With the way the season is shaking out on the ladies’ side, I felt the need to dust off the ole’ cross country record book to see when the last time a freshman won NCAAs.

Any guesses? 

 

Suzie Tuffey of N.C. State is the only freshman woman to win an NCAA cross country title, all the way back in 1985. After this past weekend, that 30-year-old trivia question suddenly seems very useful.

 

Tiny Allie Ostrander, who wasn’t even the top freshman entering the weekend, is suddenly the #1 ranked individual in the country after not only winning Wisco, but also taking down Abbey D’s 2013 course record in the process. Yeah, that Abbey D, who went on to win the NCAA Championship that same year. And did I mention Ostrander beat two national champions, Molly Seidel and Dom Scott, as well?

 

Yes, Allie O is now squarely in the national title discussion in a race that will seemingly come down to whoever has it on the day. The Boise State frosh took two impressive scalps by beating Seidel and Scott, but conventional wisdom, and 30 years of history, tells us that she won’t cross the line first in Louisville when it really matters. But that same wisdom also told me that a freshman wouldn’t break a course record held by one of the greatest NCAA distance runners ever, and look where that got me. 

 

Outside of Ostrander’s record-breaking day, the larger point after this weekend is that the women’s individual battle is wide open. A handful of ladies, including 2014 runner-up Sarah Disanza, who has yet to race this season, are potential candidates, a stark contrast to the men’s trophy which already has King Cheserek’s name engraved on the bottom. Ostrander won big this weekend, but before Wisco she wasn’t even the most talked about freshman, as N.C. State’s Ryen Frazier had all the hype after winning big at Notre Dame. With 2014 champ Kate Avery departing the NCAA, complete mayhem has ensued. We’ll see if veteran order can be restored on November 21st, or if a freshman can tear down everything we thought we knew about NCAA XC like Ostrander did on Friday.

 

Speaking of King Cheserek, his choice to “run as slow as possible,” at Pre-Nats allowed the world to get its first glance at Thomas Curtin, who had never previously made a name for himself in cross country. While his runaway victory was certainly surprising, there were signs that a big improvement was coming for Curtin this fall. He lowered his 5k PR by 20-seconds this past February down to 13:38, then proceeded to swoop up three All-American honors between NCAA indoor and outdoor in his first appearance at each. Curtin’s progression has quietly been building towards a breakout race on the XC course, and it just so happened that he was firing on all cylinders in a race that caught Mr. Cheserek off guard. Sure, the two-time NCAA champion didn’t do everything in his power to catch Curtin in the early portion of the race, but Cheserek’s inability to track him down in the latter stages shows that this up-and-comer is here to stay. Maybe Curtin is the guy to make NCAAs honest in a month’s time, where previously no other man has been willing to show this type of fearlessness against Cheserek. That alone makes the Hokie senior a winner. 

The hype train that carried Ole Miss to a pre-season #5 ranking has come to a screeching halt after the Rebels’ debacle at Wisco, as they finished an unfathomable 24th on Friday in Madison. Ryan Vanhoy’s team didn’t have a single athlete in the top-30, and really struggled in the second-half of the race as their 3-5 runners combined to score 479 points, which was more than 19 other teams had with five athletes. Yikes.

 

Fortunately for the Rebels, outlier performances such as this one can be taken with a grain of salt. A good example of this is MJ Erb’s seemingly disappointing 47th place finish on Friday, which was 24 places worse than his showing in 2014 when he was still running for Syracuse. His 2015 time was actually a tick faster than what he ran last season, but a deeper field this year knocked him back in a race that turned into a kicker’s paradise. Erb went on to place 37th at NCAAs in 2014, and his fitness looks on par with last year despite a worse finish at Wisco. A 6k tempo followed by a 2k sprint in mid-October isn’t always indicative of how an individual will fare in a longer race one month after the fact.

 

The Rebels also ran without Wes Gallagher at Wisco, who was the team’s top finisher at NCAAs last season. His presence wouldn’t have changed too much for Ole Miss this weekend even if he was on top of his game, but he certainly will be a difference maker at SECs and Regionals if he’s at full-strength considering he was the Rebels top finisher at each last season. Unfortunately, his only race this season was a brutal 135th place showing at Greater Louisville, so who knows if he'll find last year's form in time for the post-season.

 

This team still has the pieces to be a top-10 squad at NCAAs, but the clock is ticking for them to come together like we thought they would. Vanhoy has done a nice job of building a talented roster in a short time frame with all the transfers they’ve accumulated in the last year, but so far that has yet to translate to low scores on the course. We’ll know more in two weeks.