And, even though they’re slow, the women:
1. Gryphons
One thing that’s always stuck in my craw is the lack of character depth that that J.K. Rowling puts into Hippogriff characters. Apart from the one Hagrid keeps as a pet, the rest are all pretty one-dimensional. In the case of the lady Gryphs, team homogeneity is a pretty big asset - this year Carise Thompson (3rd at OUs, 2nd last year), Gen Lalonde (7th at OUs, 4th last year), Madeline Yungblut (4th at OUs, 6th last year), Heather Petrick (5th at OUs) , Katrina Allison (6th at OUs), and Robyn Mildren (9th at OUs) all finished within sight of one another at OUAs. The skill set it takes to win CIS and solve supernatural mysteries are pretty similar, and a close-knit, fast-moving team like this wouldn’t look out of place inside the Mystery Machine. Likewise, much like a combined team of the Ghostbusters, Veronica Mars, and the guys from Fringe would have trouble besting Shaggy and his crew, the rest of the CIS combined probably couldn’t field a team with as much Tom Cruise-calibre jets as this one. Expect Joanna Brown (14th at OUs, 8th last year) to rebound from a tough go in that race; she’s a triathlete and is probably a tougher cookie than last year’s Italian biscotti. This is the Wu-Tang Clan of XC, and don’t expect the death of ODB anytime soon.
2. Mustangs
The way the Western-Calgary (not Western Calgary FYI) Mustangs poach chicks off other schools they might want to consider changing their school mascot to Ralph E. Wolf from Looney Tunes. Seriously, this team is basically last year’s bronze medal-winning team plus the top two runners from 5th place Calgary, so it would be hard to imagine them not ending Vigars’ final season on a high note. Amanda Truelove (8th at OUs, 11th last year) is no longer running with more tape around her legs than a peewee hockey player, and the spread between their 2-4 runners at OUAs, Becky Pieterson (16th at OUs, 27th last year), Katie Bell (17th at OUs), and Grace Kary (20th last year, 18th at OUs) was tighter than Speculoos cookie butter from Trader Joe’s, or the filling from Fig Newtons if it were to be sold as an individual item. The rest of the team (Melissa Caruso (23rd at OUs, 29th last year), Bridget Pyke (35th at OUs, 41st last year), and Julie Hambl-twin (42nd at OUs, 31st last year)) will be aiming to displace the group of Gaels on their haels and lock up this placing.
3. Gaels
The top Gaels, or “Golden Gaels” if you will, Julie-”Assass”-Anne Staelhi (2nd at OUs, 14th in last year’s CIS race) and Victoria Coates (1st at OUs, 3rd in 2012), rank up among my favourite duos of all time, right along with hip-hop tandem OutKast, Batman & Robin from their original live action series, Kashi cinnamon crumble cereal with soy milk (except when I add raspberries, then it’s three things), and of course C + H ( <3 ). In their case however, it is unclear who will be the McCartney to whose Lennon, the Watson to whose Holmes, the left Twix to whose right one. We give it to Coates, simply because she has more experience and more on the line in her last year of eligibility. The rest of the team has no standouts, but is a solid group o’ gals (Marie Soehl (36th at OUAs, 61st last year), Veronica Allan (33rd at OUAs, 77th last year), Colleen Wilson (20th at OUAs), and Charlotte Dunlap) who will need to do better than they did last week in order to not make me look bad. The team succeeded in executing Boyd’s strategy of flying in under the radar with their OUA showing, perhaps a little too well, they’ve always been over-achievers, but if we at P&P are even half as excited about this team as he is, then Vigars and his ponies will be in for quite a surprise in one week’s time.
4. Blues
Much like their male counterparts, the Lady Blues seem to have mastered the fine art of all running pretty close to the same speed. Mary-Kate (11th) and Ashley (26th) Hennessy bracketed this squad at OUAs, with Charlotte Marcotte-Toale (12th), Honor Walmsley (19th) and rookie Claire “500 Days Of” Summer (21st) acting as the icing for this double-stacked Oreo of swift Torontonian XC goodness. There isn’t an overly precarious drop to depth types Madeleine Kelly (34th) and Donna Vakalis (37th), so this is a relatively bonk-proof roster that could thrive on an attrition sort of day, and could even accommodate one of their low-sticks pulling over for a couple rounds of mini-putt or an autograph. Compared to X-factor teams from the left and right coasts, this is money about as safe as Scrooge McDuck’s RRSP.
5. Tigers
The Dalhousie women stormed onto the scene like a Maritime winter at the RSEQ-AUS Interlock meet, before which they were given about as much thought as I gave this analogy. In our defense, only Ellen Chappell (2nd at AUS, 34th last year) and Emily Clarke (10th at AUS, 56th last year) are current scorers returning from last year. Newcomers / spell-check’s worst nightmares Natalie Sachrajda (3rd at AUS) and Anna Von Maltzahn (5th at AUS), plus Britney MacArthur (7th at AUS), helped Dal dismantle its admittedly weak comp at the AUS champs, but since their 5th scorer was 56th last year, don’t be surprised if this jag-grad iceberg rocks Victoria’s boat.
6. Spartans
The ladies from TWU look strong on paper, but we at P&P pride ourselves on not being too holier-than-thou to making tough diagnoses, and this team is more about the 1-2 than Leslie Feist with strep. The Salt N’ Pepa of the Sparts are Alison Jackson (22nd last year) and Sarah Inglis. But seriously, there’s three members of Salt N’ Pepa, and unless Regan Yee or Fiona Benson steps up, the Spartistas could drop out of contention faster than the adopted child of a post-MMBop Hanson and Soulja Boy. That being said, nothing tugs our heartstrings like heavy hitters from the glory days of black-and-orange TnFNorth, so we’re rooting for Bomba’s ladies to make good on our 6th-spot verdict and hold their own on the d-floor.
7. Vikes
We know very little about womens’ running, and even less about the teams from Victoria. They took up the majority of their early season promo video however, so we rated them higher than the guys’ squad. It’s a bold strategy Cotton, let’s hope it pays off. Team is led by Shauna McInnis we think, but it looks like most of their scorers from last year (Madeleine McDonald (50th), Jenna Van Vliet (23rd), Rachel Francois (37th), and Alison Hooper (53rd)) are back so who knows. The west coast has a “climatic advantage” for XC training that’s been noted by many distance-running luminaries, but there’s been comparatively little peer-reviewed research when it comes to the possible advantage the relatively sunny winters bestow on this team’s ability to get weird at CIS afterparty events. Our hunch at P&P is that, in this department, they’ve got at least a little bit of Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not potential.
8. Marauders
After years of trying to beat the Gryphons, and years of emasculating their male counterparts, asking them to fetch sandwiches at team luncheons while Carson, Coates, and Pearo quoted their favourite lines from Bridesmaids, the women have not only fallen from the podium but almost right out of the rankings. Coach Schnurricane, face-to-face with the facts, decided on a drastic change of strategy: If you can’t beat the Gryphs on the field, might as well bury them at the bar. Oh yeah, and the team runs pretty decent as well. Maddy “Easy Bake Oven” McDonald (13th last year) had a rough race in the mud (25th at OUs), but will be back near the top at CIs. Courtney “Don’t call me Zooey” Patterson (25th last year, 24th at OUs) is a big bad wolf this year, the conjoined twins Kiersten Myers (31st at OUs) and Emily Nowak (32nd at OUs) have only gotten better throughout the season, and Megan Beverley (51st at OUs) is back from sabbatical and on a path to her former high school glory years. Call them the new waterboys of McMaster, but it’s rarely ever water in their cups.
First-team: Staehli, Coates, Lalonde, Yungblut, Thompson, Petrick, Allison
Second-team: Mildren, Brown, Inglis, Truelove, McDonald, McInnis, Chappell
Top 20: Hardy, Hennessy, Marcotte-Toale, Jackson, Pieterson, Marton
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