Wisconsin Adidas and Pre-Nationals Dominate this Weekend's Races

Published by Adam Schneider/RunnerSpace.com/College on October 15th, 2015

Every year we come to this part of the season and we have a lot of questions as to how the NCAA Championships will turn out.  Teams we think are good enough to trophy either prove their worth, come out of nowhere to surprise and prove better than we thought, or show that they may be overworked. Wisconsin Adidas and the Pre-NCAA Invitational will host the majority of the teams that have a chance to trophy.  

Performances at these three meets do not necessarily define what these teams will do at the NCAA meet or even how good they are at this point in the season since some of the weaker regions automatically advance two teams, either if one or both would be too weak to make it out of another region. 

One team we will not see at these meets is Oklahoma State. The Cowboys’  NCAA team champion coach Dave Smith has sacrificed running in these races because as he told USTFCCCA.org he would rather not take the team if they can’t finish in the top two (automatic qualifying) of the region meet. Taking a team to the NCAA championship is a beneficial experience but at the same time if you know you can’t trophy but are able to prepare the athletes, as he has done, to do well in the big meets (NCAAs, conference meets), the cost of going to an NCAA meet after a long season of running longer races than their best event, or just getting overworked, may hurt the rest of their season. 

Wisconsin Adidas Invitational

October 16th

The most attended, by highly ranked teams, of the two races is the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational.  Teams can “score” the most “important wins” at this meet and make it easy to be an at-large selection when the NCAA committee determines  the at-large bids after the regional meet.

Like last year the race is loaded with NCAA championship favorites on the women’s side. #1 New Mexico put four in the top six and five in the top 12 at Notre Dame in spite of top competition. Newcomers Courtney Frerichs and Rhona Auckland are top ten contenders at the NCAA meet and they will challenge to win at Wisconsin. #3 Providence is leaving the northeast  for the first time this year and will get challenged for the first time this year. #5 Boise State brings freshmen Taylor Ostrander and Annie Bothma to try and repeat their Roy Griak win.

#6 Michigan is also fresh off a big victory at the Greater Louisville Classic. Led by the 1-2 finish of healthy Erin Finn and Shannon Osika. #9 Washington has shown more depth this year and Maddie Meyers continues to improve. #10 Wisconsin has so many questions about top runners yet to race. Sara Disanza was second last year and set an indoor US junior record in the 5000m  but she was hurt before the NCAA meet and did not run outdoors. Defending NCAA champion #11 Michigan State needs to show they can replace injured Lindsay Clark or Katie Landwehr. Junior Rachel Schulist was fourth at the NCAA championships last year and will hold the team together until Clark and Landwehr will return. 

#12 Arkansas and #13 North Carolina State have impressive #1 runners and newcomers. Arkansas has one of the favorites for the individual championship, Dominique Scott, and they will see how freshman Devin Clark does in her first big challenge. North Carolina State brings to Wisconsin the #1 freshman in the country, Ryen Frazier. She is already a two-time USTFCCCA.org athlete -of-the-week. Ryan will challenge herself over a 6000m course for the first time. Other teams it will be interesting to see will be #14 BYU, #15 Iowa State, #18 William and Mary, #19 Penn State, and #20 Syracuse.

Two of the race’s top seeded men’s teams, #3 Syracuse and #4 Iona, are favored to go 1-2 again. Sophomore Justyn Knight and senior Martin Hehir return for the Orangemen. Knight had an impressive win the the Coast to Coast Battle-in-Beantown. #4 Iona waited until two weekends ago at the Greater Louisville Classic to unveil their top seven and beat a tough field by putting five in the first 16. They are led by sophomore Chart Miller and a tough group of internationals that fought through injuries last year to still put Iona in eighth at the NCAA meet.  

Host #8 Wisconsin has run all of its runners as a pack recently but it is likely Coach Mick Byrne has been using meets as hard tempo runs but they should challenge the favorites for the win. #2 Stanford lost the Washington Invitational two weeks ago due to running only two of their top five.  They are extremely deep and well coached. Health and training will determine the Stanford line-up but don’t expect the top crew to compete at the same time until the Pac-12 meet and NCAA meet. The strategy worked perfectly last year with an injury-prone group but still Stanford was second at the NCAA meet. Mason Ferric of #6 Michigan has been undefeated this year and the Wolverines have returned two runners with NCAA experience that were missing all of last year’s cross country season, juniors Conner Mora and Nick Renberg. They have been ignored most of the season but that would be ill-advised in this race. 

There are several ranked teams that have an opportunity to take the next step in their development and move into contention as a trophy team.  Among those teams are #10 Mississippi, #11 Virginia, #13 BYU, #18 Oklahoma, #19 North Carolina State, and #20 UCLA.

Pre-NCAA Invitational

October 17

#1 Colorado and #5 Oregon will again battle in a top heavy race at Pre-Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky. Colorado returns five of their top seven from last year. Last year they put five in the top 12 at the ISU Pre-Nationals and dominated with 35 to 91 for Oregon. The most interesting part of this year’s race is who emerges as Colorado’s #6 runner. Will it be Zach Perrin or freshman John Dressel. There is no guarantee they will win this race with last year’s #1 Ammar Moussa said to be battling some injury issues. 

Oregon had some badly timed injuries last year that kept from trophying. Cheserek has already stated his purpose this year as getting a trophy. Oregon freshmen Matthew Maton (8th) and Tanner Anderson (12th) looked impressive in their first race at the Washington Invitational. #12 Georgetown, #14 Indiana, #15 Arkansas, #16 Louisville, and Notre Dame Invitational champ #17 UTEP will have a chance to impress and show they could be a trophy team at this race. 

The women’s race features a rematch between #2 Oregon and #4 Stanford. Oregon was impressive at the Washington Invitational in beating a Cranny-less Stanford and #9 Washington. Redshirt sophomore Alli Cash has led the Ducks in their first two races but there was only a :26.6 separation for runners 1-5 over a fast average 6000m pace, 19:59. Stanford brings back the Washington Invitational winner, Aisling Cuffe, and early race pace-setter Vanessa Fraser. 

A young #7 Colorado team will face it’s first ranked opponents of the season. Erin Clark and Maddie Alm hope to lead a strong freshmen class and returnees to a title at this meet. #8 Georgetown lost their #1 and #5 runners from last year but a solid group led by Samantha Nadel will have a chance to start proving they have a shot at a trophy at the end of the season. #17 California is led by sophomore Bethany Knight, the Roy Griak winner. This may be the debut for all-American Kelsey Santistiban as Cal is attempting to bring along a very talented freshmen class.

Out of these meets we will get a good gauge of where many runners are in their training and a look at what they can potentially do in a big race, but not everything about them. In Edward Cheserek’s freshman year he was fourth at the Pre-National Invitational, only because he was intentionally holding back before he won his first of nine NCAA titles and counting.  

As pointed out before the order of finish does not give you an absolute idea about where these teams will finish at the NCAA meet. The top six women’s teams from Wisconsin Adidas did finish in the top 10 at the NCAA meet, and Iona added NCAA champion Kate Avery and moved up to ninth at the NCAA meet. 

Last year 10 of the top 14 women from Wisconsin Adidas finished in the top 17 at the NCAA meet. Two of the four that did not make the top 17 ended up winning a major track title (Liv Westphal won World University 10k and Colleen Quigley won NCAA steeple title). What changed tremendously was the team results and/or the differential between teams. In order of Wisconsin finish, Michigan State won both (87 at Wisconsin and 85 at the NCAA meet), Arkansas fell from second (191) to fifth (209), Iowa State (212 for third) improved significantly (147 for second), 4th place Wisconsin (227) dropped to 10th at the NCAA meet (382) in spite of Sarah Disanza finishing 2nd at the NCAA meet, 5th place West Virginia (245) finished 8th (277), New Mexico (261) improved significantly (188 for third), 7th place Stanford (284) finished 14th (415), 17th place Boise State (480) improved to 11th (392), and 24th place Providence (565) finished 13th at the NCAA meet (401). 

It is more complicated for the men because the distance during most of the early season is 8000m or less and at the NCAA Regional and Championship meets they race 10,000m. 

For the men only 5 of the first 19 individuals made the top 20 of the NCAA meet. As far as the teams though, just like the women, six of the first 10 made the top 10 of the NCAA meet. In order of finish on the men’s side Syracuse (85) finished fifth (206), Iona (154) finished eighth (270), Wisconsin (176) finished tenth (335), Portland (211) finished third (175), Stanford (220) finished 2nd (98), sixth place Northern Arizona (225) finished fourth (188), 7th place UCLA (236) finished 18th (454), eighth placed Washington (267) finished 20th (479), 9th placed Michigan (296) finished 11th (365), 10th place Florida State (296) did not make the NCAA meet, 11th place (327) Providence finished 13th (393), 12th place (338) New Mexico finished 14th (394), 18th place (456) North Carolina finished 12th (380).