NAIA XC/TF 2024-25

Combined men’s team result from all 3 meets:

1. COI: 126

2. St. Mary: 281

3. IWU: 282

4. Milligan: 299

5. Cumberlands: 306

6. Rio Grande: 344

7. Spring Arbor: 353

8. Taylor: 360

9. Montreat: 367

10. Marian: 412

11. Dordt: 431

12. Aquinas: 456

13. Shawnee St: 465

14. St. Francis: 483

15. IU East: 491

16. Grace: 498

17. Campbellsville: 506

18. Cornerstone: 507

19. Rocky Mountain: 509

20. Kansas Wesleyan: 512

21. Cumberland: 564

22. SCAD Atlanta: 611

23. Carroll: 664

24. Olivet Nazarene: 667

25. Doane: 758

And Women’s Combined:

1. Taylor: 61

2. Milligan: 117

3. Montreat: 146

4. St. Mary: 158

5. Cumberlands: 175

6. COI: 267

7. Grace: 271

8. Marian: 300

9. IWU: 309

10. Cornerstone: 347

11. SCAD Savannah: 349

12. Dordt: 396

13. ONU: 504

14. St. Francis: 514

15. Kansas Wesleyan: 575

16. SCAD Atlanta: 633

17. Rocky Mountain: 638

18. Montana Tech: 717

19. MVNU: 735

20. Goshen: 742

21. Ave Maria: 750

22. Lewis-Clark: 759

23. Carroll: 780

24. Benedictine: 782

25. Aquinas: 803

Can you do the women too?

What did you use to make this?

Simply a results merge and score. Since the elite teams ran comparable performances, you can look at them as the baseline when comparing teams from different meets (ex: COI is the best men’s team in the country, and they averaged 2431 while Milligan averaged 2444). At Blazing Tiger in particular, some teams had real bad days and should drop significantly in the rankings.

Those courses are all different. Appalachian is way faster than the other two

Not quite…look at Louisville Blue this year for instance, people ran proportionally faster at Great Lakes than Appalachian (who ran both races). At minimum they are equivalent this year.

Which teams? The only team from the blue race I could think of that even ran at App challenge was SCAD Atlanta and they just ran worse at App challenge than they did at Louisville

Wrong Scad, Scad Savannah ran at Lou

Men: IU East, Campbellsville, Lawrence Tech, Midway, Cumberland, Freed-Hardeman, SCAD Sav

Women: Campbellsville, Olivet Nazarene, Cumberland, Freed-Hardeman, SCAD Sav

Can’t just look at team avg, have to look at what athletes ran at each…

This was very tough, as there doesn't seem to be a clear favorite following this weekend but... Here's how I think the men's side shakes out following "regional" weekend:

1. College of Idaho (3)

- CoI ran away with things at Blazing Tiger. Daniel Butler will likely be a top 5 contender at nats. Bostrom and Everist look to be gunning for top 20 finishes as well. With a 4 who also looks to be in contention for All-American honors and a 5 on the outside looking in, CoI is my (ever-so-slight) favorite for the title at the moment.

2. The Master's (2)

- Jack Anderson and Connor Ybarra might be the best 1-2 punch in the nation, behind CoI's 1-2-3. This team's title hopes would have to fall on their 3-5, and their ability to crack the top 40. It is worth noting that this squad ran well at Gans Creek on a hot September evening.

3. Oklahoma City (5)

- Evert will win barring a catastrophic collapse. Their Texas A&M results were impressive, but so was everyone else's who ran there. I am not putting a ton of stock into it. The 2-5 of this squad will really have to step up to keep pace with CoI and Master's. They also ran well at Gans under nearly ideal conditions.

4. Milligan (1)

- Milligan took a little bit of a spill at Appalachian, as they nearly fell to Cumberlands (who looked better this week). If it wasn't for Bryn Woodall's low stick, they would have tumbled further for me. The rest of their top 5 have some work to do prior to conference. Montreat could be a serious threat to knock them off at AAC's if things go how they went this weekend.

5. Indiana Wesleyan (7)

- Eli Fullerton will be a very strong #1 for this team heading into championship season. They have some solid pieces, but they seem to drop off a little quicker at 4 and 5 than the rest of the top 5 do. A Great Lakes title does show that this team can beat other top-10 caliber teams.

6. St. Mary (4)

7. Cumberlands (13)

8. Rio Grande (14)

9. Montreat (16)

10. Spring Arbor (6)

11. Dordt (11)

12. Taylor (8)

13. Embry-Riddle (12)

14. Lewis-Clark (9)

15. Marian (RV)

16. Eastern Oregon (10)

17. Kansas Wesleyan (18)

18. Aquinas (17)

19. Cumberland (Tenn.) (RV)

20. Shawnee State (20)

21. IU East (RV)

22. St. Francis (19)

23. Campbellsville (23)

24. Grace (21)

25. Rocky Mountain (RV)

Receiving Votes: Great Lakes: Cornerstone, Carroll, Olivet Nazarene

Appalachian: SCAD Atlanta

Blazing Tiger: Doane, Concordia (Ne), St. Xavier, Bellevue

None: Corban

For the most part I agree here.

Cumberland just lost to IU East and Campbellsville by a huge margin and I think both of those teams put on Somme of their best races of the year at Great Lakes, and now you’re ranking Cumberland ahead of them. That part makes no sense to me I’d put Cumberland outside of my top 25

Cumberland is better than campbellsville.

They ran against each other a few weeks ago and a Campbellsville destroyed Cumberland.

Again look at the comparison of Louisville blue race athletes who ran both either Great Lakes and Louisville or Appalachian challenge and Louisville. they are at minimum equivalent, even though mathematically speaking people ran more percentage point faster at Great Lakes as a comparison than an Appalachian challenge. so we should be rewarding teams who improve and turn in their best performances at the end of the season, not punishing them for getting beat earlier in the season. With Cumberland’s race they are clearly one of the top 25 teams in the nation. Their team average was only 26 seconds slower than Milligan…

Campbellville sucks lol

Cumberland ran well at Appalachian. If they can run like that again at their conference meet, they'll be tight with Campbellsville. But ignoring the teams last head-to-head result when then ran in separate races (where Campbellsville was faster, no less) is braindead. The two races were obviously very different competition-wise, as well, and team average is a flawed metric. The smaller conference meet might be good for the Cumberland team in replicating their performance from this weekend, but Campbellsville will rightfully be going into the race ranked ahead of them.

We have this argument every year here where people think everyone magically gets better at one race.

IU East alone is going to skew those percentages you're using heavily because of the breakout day they had. Campbellsville's also ran shorter spread by a 26 second margin at Great Lakes than they did at Louisville so it's safe to say they ran better at Great Lakes as well.

It's also worth noting that Lawrence Tech ran awful at Louisville compared to every other race they've run in this year, which would also skew those percentages quite a bit.

Cumberland definitely improved a lot, on average they looked a lot better this time around than they did at Louisville looking at teams who competed at both (idk how to phrase this clearly sorry)

They still likely would've lost to Campbellsville. Campbellsville beat SCAD Savannah by 38 seconds on average at Louisville. Cumberland only beat them by 32 seconds on average at Appalachian, so they would've likely been on average still 6 seconds slower. I know this is only one team but I'm not looking through each of these teams, and I also think you're intentionally cherry picking information to share on here.

Like I said, I also think Campbellsville ran their best race of the year at Great Lakes.

Cumberland's team time is also one of the most heavily skewed by their front runners of anyone in the country. They ran a 2:16 spread and aren't as good as their team time would have you believe.

Oh I agree that Campbellsville should be ranked higher (see the merged meet I shared earlier) and that factors in Cumberland’s front runner.

This point is also important even considering the possibility they did run that well, they still wouldn't be better than the other two teams in my eyes just based on one race.

Cumberland has competed against other top ranked teams a handful of times and hasn't beat anyone or even been very close. They're not a top 25 team and definitely not beating IU East.