Racers sprint at the start of last season's DODDS-Europe cross country championship race at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Baumholder, Germany, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
The 2015 DODDS-Europe cross country fields will have leaders eventually. For now, it’s all but impossible to tell who that might be.
The decorated careers of 2014 individual champions Julia Lockridge and Mitchell Bailey have run their course. Most of that pair’s top challengers from last fall followed them through the DODDS-Europe finish line.
What remains is a mix of experience and fresh potential: a handful of returning contenders hoping to parlay their on-paper frontrunner status into victory when cleats meet the ground, and a new batch of hopefuls vying to skip the line and assume the abandoned thrones.
Both efforts get under way Saturday, as the 2015 DODDS-Europe cross country season begins with 25 schools in action at five locations. Four more weekends of regular-season action follow, leading up to the Oct. 31 championship race at Baumholder.
Boys The top returning finisher in either boys or girls cross country is Ramstein’s Aaron Schlosser, fourth in the 2014 European championship race. Also back is fifth-place finisher Alexander Bowman of Stuttgart.
Schlosser and Bowman each headline large Division I programs in similar straits. Both are long on depth – Stuttgart (formerly Patch) reports 53 male runners this fall – but shy on proven top-flight talent beyond their returning top-five performers. With two of Europe’s best to chase in practice, however, both schools are hoping several prospects to find their way to the foreground of the pack.
Fellow Division I schools Kaiserslautern and Wiesbaden, meanwhile, have similar potential-laden squads, minus the benefit of a top-10 finisher at the top of the depth chart.
Raider junior Evan Mackie hopes to make a big leap from his 15th-place finish a year ago, while Wiesbaden returns none of the three top-20 finishers it fielded in 2014 and is pinning its hopes primarily on new arrival Sidney Perry.
With rebuilding across the big-school ranks, the timing might be right for an upstart from a smaller program to blaze a championship trail. Among the candidates are SHAPE senior Tobias Muxfeldt, who came in ninth last year; Ansbach junior Nicholas Duplessie, No. 16 in 2014; senior Daniel Sparks of title-race host Baumholder; and Brussels senior Canyon LaClair, an accomplished track and field performer making the switch from football to cross country this fall.
Girls The ranks of returning talent are even thinner on the girls side, with no top-six finishers back from the 2014 championship meet. A field that wide open is likely to produce a heated race to the top.
Katelyn Schultz of Ramstein is the incumbent favorite after finishing seventh last fall. She headlines a deep Royals team that includes 10th-place finisher Quinci Cox along with Camille Adams, Hannah Dranz and Dasha Pontiff.
As with the boys teams, most of DODDS-Europe’s traditional powers are looking to replenish rosters decimated by graduation and PCS moves, including defending Division I team champion Stuttgart, runner-up Ramstein and third-place Kaiserslautern. Sophomore Helena Arnold and junior Althea Hohan carry the Raiders’ hopes, while another Wiesbaden newbie, Gillian Torza, enters to high expectations.
The frontrunners from the big German schools will be confronted by a number of worthy contenders from across the continent.
In Italy, returning Naples runner Shiloh Houseworth and Aviano sophomores Ginny Belt and Elyse Slabaugh should mount challenges.
From the north, Kiki Carson of Brussels and Anna Kyle of SHAPE are likely to improve on solid 2014 showings. Carson finished 12th in last year’s European final, while Kyle ranked 16th.
And from Bavaria, junior Julianna Saunders headlines an Ansbach program that consistently produces top-flight runners and track athletes.
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