NYU tries to get back on top, and Iona aims for the top, as another college cross country season gets underway in New York.
Coach Nick McDonough’s NYU men’s team “shocked the world” with a surprise championship in the Div. III nationals two years ago. A year ago, the Lower Manhattan Violets slipped all the way to 12th place, but anything can happen from one year to the next in a division not ruled by scholarship athletes or foreign recruits.
McDonough has a solid veteran squad back for 2009, led by his usual Jersey mob – in this case, Calvin Lee, Matt Turlip and Jack Fitzhenry, all from “across the river.” In preseason rankings, NYU is ranked 14th –about where they were in ’07, the year they won it all – with North Central (Ill.) 1st and the defending champions, upstate upstart Cortland State, 3rd.
Coach Steve Patrick’s Cortland squad is led by two seniors, Kyle O’Brien (Monroe-Woodbury) and Eric Stermer (Chenango Forks), and two newcomers, Patrick Fannon (West Islip) and Tom Hopkins (West Genesee). The entire team is of course from the Empire State.
Iona is coming off an amazing run in the NCAA Div. I championships – 2nd place in 2007 under Mick Byrne, the school’s highest finish ever in a major championships in any sport, and 2nd again last year under Ric Santos, who returned to his alma mater after Byrne’s sudden departure to the University of Wisconsin. (The Gaels were also 3rd in 2006, 4th in 2005 and 4th in 2003.) Their challenge now is to replicate, or improve, on those performances.
Santos had an impressive recruiting off-season, landing two foreign stars from Europe, Thorsten Baumeister and Craig Murphy, and one in-state star, Chris Stogsdill of Syracuse. But he also lost a lot – top-10 finishers Andrew Ledwith and Mohamed Khadraoui and No. 4 man Harbert Okuti.
The Gaels are preseason-ranked 7th in the men’s Div. I poll, implying that the rest of the country doesn’t think they can’t match that runnerup finish again, at least not so far. Oregon is favored to repeat as team champions, although the Ducks lost the individual winner, Galen Rupp, to graduation.
On the women’s side, the top team from the Tri-State area appears to be Coach Pete Farrell’s Princeton Tigers. He returns an impressive group that includes Liz Costello (15th last year), Alex Banfich, Reilly Kiernan and Ashley Higginson. They are preseason-ranked 7th but at Regionals will have to contend with a number of powerhouses, including West Virginia (No. 4), Villanova (No. 5) and Georgetown (No. 9). WVa finished 4th at nationals a year ago, Princeton 5th, Nova 6th, the Hoyas 9th.
Stony Brook got a few votes – just out of the ranked teams. Coach Andy Ronan has a fine squad, led by the Kiwi sisters Lucy and Holly Van Dalen, along with veterans Laura Huet, Hayley Green and Ruth Gillespie.
The University of Washington is ranked No. 1 in Div. I women’s, hoping to repeat as champions, ranked just ahead of the Oregon Ducks, who were 2nd to Washington a year ago. Oregon is led by New York native Nicole Blood, now a senior. Blood was runnerup in the NCAA 5,000 on the track last spring.
Iona’s newcomers will join returnees Ryan Sheridan (Walt Whitman HS), Jason Weller (Boyertown, Pa.) and Daniel Lipus (Renscheid, Germany), although Lipus, a 4:00 miler, ran track but not cross-country last season. Baumeister (8:18 for 3k) is also from Germany, Murphy (8:20 from Ireland, where he was the country’s schoolboy cross-country and track champion. The other star newcomer, Stogsdill, who went to Marcellus High, ran 4:06.70 for the mile in the spring.
At NYU, Lee (Old Tappan), Turlip (Dunellen) and Fitzhenry (St. Joe’s) are joined by Sebastian Schwelm (Berkeley, Calif.) and Zach Maher (Carmel, N.Y.).
In Div. III, Peter Kosgei of Hamilton College upstate returns to defend his individual title. Jesse Schneider, 5th for NYU, and Seth Dubois, 7th for Cortland, graduated. In the preseason rankings, the Geneseo men are also highly ranked, in 5th, and St. Lawrence is 20th.
In women’s rankings Div. III, Middlebury, the defending champions, are ranked 1st, Geneseo 8th, St. Lawrence 12th, Cortland 17th, Plattsburgh 21st.
No New York schools matter in Div. II or NAIA, but they do figure prominently in the small Div. III division of JUCO, where the SUNY Delhi men are ranked No. 1 nationally, Mohawk Valley No. 2 and Alfred State No. 3. In the women’s, Ocean County Community College, of Toms River, N.J., is ranked 1st, a curious development because the school didn’t even have a women’s cross country team a year ago; new Coach Ed Baynes must be doing quite a job. He’s ranked just ahead of N.Y. schools Mohawk Valley, Broome, Delhi and Erie.