Big Season Ahead
All-time lists are getting a makeover and the bar for nationals raises just a little bit higher after this weekend. On the track, several early-season marks have already surpassed marks that were barely attained last year, indicating that the rest of this season is in for some impressive performances.
The headlining events this weekend were the men’s and women’s mile, as four men ran under 4:10 and four women ran under 5:00, propelling two athletes on each side to etch their names into the USTFCCCA D3 all-time lists.
In the men’s event, John Carroll’s Alex Phillip led the weekend with a second-place finish at the University of Michigan among several D1 runners in a nation-leading time of 4:05.50, good for 14th all-time in D3 history. Not far behind him, Wartburg’s Christopher Collet ran 4:06.73 to place third amongst D1 talent and secure a spot on the all-time list as the 20th fastest D3 miler in history.
Hope’s Nicholas Hoffman and Johns Hopkins’s Matthew Kleiman both posted 4:09’s to place them in the top five on the indoor leaderboard. In 2020, just six men dipped under the 4:10 barrier throughout the whole season. This year, five men (including Loras’s Ryan Harvey in December) have hit this milestone in just the first half of the season.
On the women’s side, 2021 XC National Champion Kassie Parker of Loras showed her chops in the middle distances in an incredible solo effort of 4:50.29. In the absence of D1 runners to push her as in Phillip’s and Collet’s races, Parker lapped the entire field, with the exception of second place, posting the 11th fastest time in D3 history. Just one second behind, Johns Hopkins’s Ella Baran posted a top-15 historical time of 4:51, while Carleton’s Clara Mayfield and Calvin’s Sadie Heeringa also rose to the top of the leaderboard with their performances of 4:53 and 4:56, respectively.
Listen to Baran’s live interview with D3GD here, as she hints at her season goal to take down the D3 record.
In 2020, Parley Hannan ran 4:54 in the mile on January 18th and one month later, broke the indoor 5k record in 16:05. Kassie Parker’s time of 4:50 this weekend indicates she has the turnover and may be on schedule for a record attempt this season.
Faster than last year
Another distance event proving to be fast this year is the women’s 3k, as five women have broken 9:50 already this season: Baran, Heeringa, Trine’s Evie Miller, and just this weekend, fifth and sixth place cross country finishers Fiona Smith of Benedictine and Aubrie Fisher of Wartburg, respectively. In 2020, only five women accomplished this feat all winter.
Surprisingly, the sixth name on the current 3k list is Messiah’s Esther Seeland, who showed her range in an impressive double of 59.56 in the 400m and 9:54 in the 3k at the Alvernia Winter Invite. In November, the D1 program at the University of Virginia announced that the two-time 800m national champion had signed to their program, prompting many to believe the senior would don an orange and navy singlet on the track this year. For clarification, we contacted Seeland’s coach, Dale Fogelsanger, who confirmed that Seeland will continue to compete for Messiah this year as she completes her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and then attend UVA for graduate school starting in the fall of 2022, where she will be able to use her remaining eligibility.
Seeland is one to look out for in the 800m this season. She is coming off a dominating spring season in which she came within 0.02 seconds of the U.S. Olympic Trials qualifying standard in the 800m with her time of 2:02.52. The event is currently led by WashU’s Emma Kelley and U of Chicago’s Claudia Harnett, who posted times of 2:10 and 2:12 this past weekend in a head-to-head race at the I55 Tri-Meet.
All-time list makeovers
Other additions to the all-time lists this past weekend were that of Wesleyan’s Grace Devanny and Geneseo’s Kieran Sheridan, whose 500m-long efforts launched them into the top ten historical performances in this non-championship event. Devanny set a new national record of 1:15.20, while 400m leader Sheridan posted the ninth fastest time in history at 1:04.75.
Finally, while the past 72 hours certainly proved to be an impressive weekend in the distance events, there’s a big name in the field events that is starting to gain momentum—Rhode Island College’s Chelsea Yang. Yang added her name to the USTFCCCA top 25 all-time list in the weight throw for the 20th time with her toss of 18.49m, over half a meter farther than the rest of the nation. Look for Yang to continue to add meterage to this mark, which is already better than her mid-January marks from any other season.
And while the all-time lists remained pretty quiet in most other events, here are some notable switches in national leaders after this weekend’s host of meets:
Leaderboard changes
-Nebraska Wesleyan's Maddie Moran took over the lead in the women’s 60m dash with her time of 7.67, a performance she nearly replicated in the final when she ran 7.69. Teammate Isabella Hogue posted a time of 56.34 in the 400m dash, moving her to the #2 spot, while other Prairie Wolf Isabella Hilger finished right behind her in 58.88. Watch out for the 4x400m time this squad is likely cooking up.
-Lexi LaFever of Wisconsin-River Falls now leads the 200m dash with her time of 25.31. LaFever was last season’s 200m indoor leader and now has a chance to translate her two-year reign to a national championship trophy with the promise of an NCAA meet.
-In the hurdles, WPI’s Oliver Thomas and Wartburg’s Dallas Wright creep closer to leader Koren Leonard, a junior college transfer now representing Benedictine. Thomas ran 8.03 to break his own school record at WPI, while Wright posted 8.07. North Central’s Julia Babinec takes over the lead in the women’s hurdles with her time of 8.75.
-The women’s vault now sees new leaders in Augustana’s Kat Krebasch and Tufts’s Sarah Firth, who cleared 3.86m and 3.83m, respectively, to surpass outdoor national champ Megan Matheny of Ithaca. Matheny has only cleared 3.70m so far this season but boasts a PR of 3.97m.
-In the horizontal jumps, national runner-up Matt Fleming of Benedictine leads the way in the long jump with his leap of 7.39m. Centre’s Jasmine Claunch passes U of Chicago’s Isabel Maletich in the triple jump by a single centimeter with a bound of 12.02m. Last year, only John Carroll’s Courtney Phoennik had jumped over 12m indoors, while this year both Claunch and Maletich have already exceeded this milestone.
-In the men’s 3k, Simpson’s Spencer Moon and Wartburg’s Joe Freiburger added their names to the qualifying list with their performances of 8:18 and 8:19, respectively. John Carroll’s Jamie Dailey and Otterbein’s Bill Daily both ran 8:21 to join Moon and Freiburger in the top ten.
The nation is currently led, however, by Williams star Aidan Ryan. In his first race of the indoor season, Ryan ran the fastest time over 3,000 meters of any D3 athlete in history, covering the distance in a blazing 7:55.29, only the second D3 athlete to run under 8 minutes. He previously sat as #3 on the all-time list with his time of 8:08.96 from 2019, but was recently moved up to #2 after a correction to North Central’s Dan Mayer’s record of 7:59 as having been run on an oversized track. Now, both Ryan and the legendary Mayer sit side-by-side on a separate list of records set on oversized tracks in the record books (welcome to the official oversized-track unofficial record-holder’s club, Aidan).
Perhaps even more impressively, Ryan placed ninth overall in this race, which took place at University of Washington, and was the fourth collegiate behind several pros, D1, and D2 athletes. In fact, Ryan currently has the seventh fastest 3k time in the NCAA of all divisions. Although this race happened two weekends ago, it’s worth mentioning again in the absence of a proper recap from us last week and, well, no 3k has come near it this year or any year in D3 history.
Listen to him talk about his recent D3 record here.
And there you have it—your weekend review of all the lead changes, history writes, and eligibility clarifications you need to keep you up-to-date in the world of D3 track and field. The current forecast? Dangerous speeds with a chance of record-breaking. Seek D3GD coverage immediately.