2025 D3 XC Nationals Predictions

Forecasted high of 75 Saturday. Who thought it was a good idea to race in South Carolina? Even racing at 10 & 11 will be warm. Maybe that’s the trade off for Texas and California - you race at 5 am your time but can’t complain about the temps.

And why are running at a course hosted by a D1 school on the campus of a different D1 school?

The campus is not relevant — it was at Michigan State in 2022 and a high school in 2023. But it was hosted by DIII schools. Who is hosting this year?

University of South Carolina-Upstate. If you read the pre-championships manual, it appears the head coach is in charge of every major duty other than athletic training. Could be interesting.

Qualifiers should have been released by now? NCAA slacking?

Over 15 minutes late is unacceptable. Someone has to be fired for this

They suck so bad. I go to the website and it says "qualifiers announced" but sends me to some old history page.

It's run like a bad high school athletics page.

Rose makes it. Having one of their top two finally healthy makes them nationally impactful. Having two runners go 1-2 in the Region will be a confidence builder for a team qualifying for the first time

Guessing the committee saw the point gap to Oshkosh and decided it was too much.

Does the committee publish their reasoning? I know the D1 football/basketball committee is always interviewed after the fact. Would love to hear why they valued teams going to big meets and doing just okay versus teams more. Also curious about how impactful Suffolk's trip to BluGold was on their qualifying and things like that. I would think that would help coaches schedule in the future.

It honestly seems like the last few teams on the bubble were all about the same. We haven't seen any of the "we got hosed" posts for a reason.

Based on rankings (which don't play into selection), the men's side played out pretty true to form with everyone ranked getting in. One the Women's side, ranked Central (#24) and Coast Guard (#29) did not advance. Coast Guard had a lot of W's during the season, so not sure what kept them out. Central oddly didn't race anyone outside the region. They could have picked up tons of points if they went to Augustana, but for some reason when to a different meet and didn't have a resume besides being close to Wartburg which probably cost them a trip as a team

Dickinson goes home DEVASTATED

Dickinson was out of the conversation after Swarthmore ENDED them at Paul Short.

why did eau claire make it before Bates? I don't understand why you'd put in a team with fewer wins based off some common opponents tiebreaker. I know why they make it subjective but the D1 and D2 systems are better in that they're objective and formula based

They did not, in fact, do it for Carlisle

Everyone in the ARC and Midwest probably wondered why Central ran the schedule they did. They seemed to be relying on beating Wartburg late in the season to get in and didn't have the 3, 4 and 5 runners to do that. Not running Augustana was a mistake, for sure.

Because Bates lost to Middlebury AND Wesleyan.

The North region will bring its recents to South Carolina next Saturday and will show the rest of you candy strippers why the North is best. Also word on the street is that Dickinson is absolutely devastated right now.

Swarthmore was likely above Bates due to Paul Short since the committee disregarded wins. If you include Rose-Hulman over Bates due to head-to-head, you have to go Swarthmore over Bates as well. First team out was either Swarthmore or Oshkosh. You're right though that the D1 system would have qualified Bates.

Oshkosh's races this year: beat Eau Claire and Whitewater at Blugold, beat Rose-Hulman at Augustana (lost by 6 to Eau Claire and 77 to Whitewater), beat Eau Claire and tied (lost on tiebreaker) to Whitewater at WIACs. That's 4 (almost 5) wins against nationally qualified teams.

One lesson learned from this year is that the committee definitely values that regional result very highly. Regional point gap had to have eliminated Oshkosh. Common opponents and regional point gap are definitely more important relatively important than I had thought. And wins against already selected teams isn't really important. The process is also clearly subjective.

Agreed the committee should publish the reasoning!!!!!!!