By Jack Pfeifer
The preseason rankings are out and, no surprise, Oregon and Washington, those Pacific Northwest rivals, are favored to repeat as national champions.
Neither one is a dynasty, however. The Oregon men, despite their reputation, won last year in Terre Haute, Ind., for the first time since 1977, when New York’s own Matt Centrowitz was on the team. Last fall, Matt’s son, Matthew, was a Duck instead. For the Washington women, it was the first national championship ever for the Seattle school in track or cross country.
The Oregon women are ranked No. 2 nationally heading into this season behind the Huskies, the same spot where they finished a year ago when Washington prevailed at the NCAA 79-131.
The UW has a formidable group, for it returns its top four finishers (Christine Babcock 7th, Kendra Schaaf 12th, Mel Lawrence 25th, Katie Follett 26th) along with Lauren Saylor, who was 41st but didn’t even score! The Ducks have back two top-10 finishers, Alex Kosinski (8th) and New York’s own Nicole Blood (10th), but they lost Lindsey Scherf, Mattie Bridgmon and Zoe Nelson. Of course, they also have the country’s top recruit, California tyke Jordan Hasay. The first big question of the fall will be: Will Hasay cut off her famous knee-length blonde ponytail?
The Oregon men will not have a cakewalk. First, they must replace graduates Galen Rupp and Shadrack Kiptoo Biwott, who finished 1-9 a year ago, and they must deal with the oncoming Oklahoma State Cowboys – coached by another guy from the Northwest, Washingtonian Dave Smith – and their young phenom, German Fernandez.
Fernandez, the national high school athlete of the year a year ago, dropped out of the 2008 NCAA cross country championship race with an Achilles injury, and his future at that point was doubted. Then indoors he ran 3:55 in the mile yet skipped the NCAA championship race. More doubters. Outdoors he got beat by a fellow freshman, Chris Derrick of Stanford, in a 5,000, but a month later he toyed with the field in the NCAA championship 1,500, and a few weeks later took the national Junior record in the 5,000 away – from his newfound rival, Derrick.
Fernandez will team up with two Kenyans, John Kosgei (8th last year - pictured left) and David Chirchir; veteran Ryan Vail, a 13:37 5,000 guy from Portland, Ore., and Colby Lowe, a young Texan who was Junior 5k champion last summer. The Cowboys have also added an 8:16 Brit, Tom Farrell.
The Ducks will have to hit on all cylinders to beat that group. They counter with NCAA veterans Luke Puskedra (5th last year as a freshman), Centrowitz (45th), Diego Mercado (54th), Kenny Klotz (66th) and Olympian halfmiler Andrew Wheating (75th), along with Diego’s brother, Danny, and newcomers Mac Fleet, a 4:02 miler from San Diego, and Elijah Greer, a 1:47 halfmiler from Portland.
Oregon could also face a challenge within its own Pacific-10 conference. Stanford, currently ranked 3rd nationally and 3rd a year ago, behind the Ducks and Iona, return Derrick (7th last year), Jake Riley and Elliott Heath and add such newcomers as Coloradans Evan Appel and Andrew Berberick, Tyler Stutzman of Virginia, Graham Bazell of Maryland, and the Valdes brothers Tyler and Ryan from Dana Hills, Calif.
In the women’s rankings, Florida State, led by Dutch miler Susan Kuijken, are preseason-ranked 3rd, ahead of two Big East rivals, West Virginia and Villanova, while Stanford is 6th and Princeton 7th. FSU was 3rd last year, WVa 4th, Princeton 5th and Nova 6th. WVa returns its three top guns, Keri Bland, Mary-Louise Asselin and Clara Grandt; Villanova’s star, Frances Koons, has graduated.
In Division II, Adams State of Colorado tries to defend both team championships and is ranked No. 1 so far in both divisions. Shippensburg sophomore Neely Spence is back, after entertaining thoughts of transferring to Div. I Baylor University in Texas. Spence was 2nd to Jessica Pixler of Seattle Pacific in the individual race last year; Pixler is also back.
Although it won last year’s team championship, the SUNY Cortland men are ranked just 3rd in preseason Div. III rankings. North Central (Ill.) and Wisconson-LaCrosse rank 1-2. In the women’s, the defending champions, Middlebury College of Vermont, are ranked 1st. Williams College of Western Mass. and Geneseo (N.Y.) are both ranked in the Top 10 for both sexes. Johns Hopkins of Baltimore is a surprise No. 5 in the women’s.
Other top-ranked schools are Malone (Ohio), NAIA men, and Cal State/San Marcos, NAIA women; Rend Lake men and El Pasco women in JC Div. I, and SUNY Delhi men and Ocean County (N.J.) women in JC Div. III.
In the individual Div. I races, with Rupp gone, the favored male runner will be Samuel Chelanga of Liberty, who battled Rupp most of the way a year ago until losing in the run-in. Chelanga, who once attended FDU in New Jersey, later broke the collegiate record in the 10,000 last spring.
In the women’s, Sally Kipyego of Texas Tech has graduated after winning the title three times. The top returnees are Jenny Barringer, Colorado’s brilliant steeplechase champion, who returns for her final few months of eligibility; Florida State’s Kuijken, who was 2nd last year, and Angela Bizzarri of Illinois, who beat Oregon’s Blood in the NCAA 5k in June and was 6th in last year’s race. And of course, there’s also Hasay, who won innumerable state titles in four star-crossed years in California.
RIGHT: photo courtesy Victah Sailer / Photorun.net