Never to early to start talking about this coming season. Last year on the guys side, AIC Bentley and Stonehill made it to Nattys. 2 out of these 3 teams still look really strong coming into this year.
AIC will return a lot of good runners that had great track seasons. Leakey seems to be their #1 after his year on the track. Mitch Byrne, Hume and Mehretu are all strong runners as well. Not sure what happened to Chirchir during the track season but if he is healthy they seem virtually unbeatable.
Bentley pulled off a repeat of 2012 last year; under performed at NE-10's and over performed at Regionals. They return 5 of their top 7 which bodes well if they can stay healthy. They seemingly will look to Cadorette and Haas to lead the team. Frosh Murphy had a good cross season last year and Higgins was their 2nd best 5k runner without being in their top 7 last year.
Stonehill will lose Massey and Gordon, 2 of their top 3, but will their younger guys will look to step up. Santo had some good 10k's that will translate to cross country. Taxter, Dowd and Carney all had good freshmen campaigns and will give Stonehill a good core but they will be young.
Franklin Pierce will have Minors back after a disappointing regionals race but great track seasons. I know that he was limited running/racing this spring so hopefully he'll be back to full strength. They will also have Holmes and Smith who can both place high in the conference/region. However, I'm not sure what they have to offer after those three, maybe a good recruiting class will put them in the mix.
Some other teams in the conference like Adelphi (Grady, Velasquez) and SNHU (Nacho, McLaren) will have a few guys in the mix but not sure what they can do as a team. My picks for the conference would be:
Teams:
1. AIC
2. Bentley
3. Stonehill
Individuals:
1. Leakey - AIC
2. Byrne - AIC
3. Nacho - SNHU
4. MGrady -Adelphi
5. Santo - Stonehill