No introduction could possibly prepare for these preds.
1. Guelph
In many ways the CIS XC season on the women's side reminds the P&P staff of Saturday morning cartoons - the plot lines will get stretched out over two months and everyone will get up to lots of hijinks, but at the end of the day nobody really expects Phineas & Ferb not to come out on top. The lady Gryphs have graduated Furtado and Brown, but we still expect the 2012 edition to play out much like years past. The Guelphites pick up blue-chip recruits like other schools pick up polypropylene longsleeves - cases in point Maddy Yungblut and Katrina Allison have reportedly ventured into sub-10:00 Andre 3000 territory.
2. Victoria
Much like the men's rankings, if anyone will play Squidward to Guelph's Spongebob, it will be the ladies from Le Ouest. Newcomers to the Bikini Bottom scene include Calgary transfer Maddy MacDonald (6th at CIS 2010) and Jenna van Vliete (30th at CIS 2010). Rookie Emma Bibault should be a regular contributor to Victoria Performs Well as a Team magazine and our intelligence informs us that Riley McQueen ovalled the oval pretty quickly once or twice this summer. Holes in the Vikes' Swiss include Laura Mitic and Alicia Roske, 3rd and 6th on last year's depth chart. Frankly, we're not sure if they'll have the tools to seriously challenge for the title, but nobody thought dogs could play basketball before Air Bud either. We'll root for these underdogs.
3. McMaster
The Mac girls will be a changed team this year. With Anderson, Haliburton, and Giovannetti packing up their copies of Dr. Seuss' "Oh the Places You'll Go", at first glance they look like an indie rock collective with no harpsichord player. But with former CIS champ Lindsay Carson healthy and running well, first and second AC ladies Victoria “Mud in your eye” Coates, and Jill Wyman, the Mac girls will be just fine. OFSAA and Jr. National 3000m champion Madeline McDonald will be snooping around in search of ROY honours. Fighting for the top seven spots on this talented team will be distance star and team captain Stephanie MacNeill, Zooey Deschanel wannabe Courtney Patterson, Chelsea Mackinnon, and rookie Tiffany Cheung. They'll be in the hunt for any flavour of medal.
4. Western
Boasting home court advantage (No, literally. They probably will be boasting about it.) and returning MOST of their top 7 from last year, except for last year's top scorer Jen Bays. Duke transfer Amanda Truelove and Becky (nom nom mileage) Pieterson will have to step up their game in order for the girl-stangs to challenge for both a podium spot or an afterparty title. But like their male counterparts, they'll have to perfect the perfect lemon-meringue-pie double peak. Regardless, safe money says there'll be some High Violet at the Nationals.
5. McGill
If you're a social media-savvy sports fan in Montreal, the local hockey club asks you to "#raisethetorch" to scare up hype for the bleu blanc et rouge (French words: are we doing them right?). At P&P XC is the name of the game and we encourage #washyourshorts instead. The Martlets will likely be washing off a mixture of blood, sweat, tears, curd and gravy as they hunt for an RSEQ title and a top-5 national (international?) finish. They lose their top finisher Charlene Puel, and 6th gal Catherine Drouin-Audet, but return everyone else like a stack of untouched ANTH 101 textbooks, and with Caroline "Pfister the Shifter" Pfister in the mix, this team looks another year plus forte. If Western or Mac falters, the 'Lets will be picking up the pieces faster than the average Dyson product.
6. Saskatchewan
Ever since we watched Balto we've had a soft spot for the Huskies, and with their big three gone (Souter, Warkentin, Richards) this team will need an equally heroic story to avoid tumbling down the standings. Leia Fedyk and Rachael Edwards are the Husk-varna engines that will be driving these girls along the Iditarod Trail, and they'll need some young pups to set down their chew toys and take on some real responsibility. Last year they were narrowly nipped for the bronze medal spot, but we don't see them Phelps-ing again this year. In fact, they only reason we've got them pegged as high as 6th is because we wrote these in order and couldn't wait to make some dog jokes. Remember Clifford? That guy was way bigger than a regular dog.
7. StFx
The AUS conference (bonspiel? informal gathering of like-minded lobster farmers?) is easy to forget, but at P&P we make it our business to fish up obscure teams and make unfounded claims about how they'll perform. St. FX seems to be the class of the East Coast, but come CIS will probably still be further under the radar than a rough draft of a review for an independent screenplay set to open in 2016. It looks like top gun Kelly MacDonald has flown the coop, as have #3 Rebecca Reeves and #6 Tory Anderson. We've slotted them in 7th so as not to hurt their feelings, but without big years from rookies Sadie "Maverick" Petrie and Kendra "Goose" MacNeil this team won't beat Laval. Kannenberg and Hardy will be the other trees holding up the St. FX tree fort. We don't like to restrict our predictions to race results, so here's another one: it seems like only a matter of time before they'll develop an Eiffel 65-based cheer.
8. Laval
It's common knowledge (seriously, there's a Wikipedia article about it) that the Laval men's team is more star-studded than Albus Dumbledore's pillowcase. But what about the women? Frankly, we don't have a clue. A track-centric team should be able to shake and bake on a 5k XC course. The good folks at montrealendurance.com are our go-to source for in-depth analysis of all things francophone, and they've pegged Laval as the #2 fiddler on the RSEQ roof, with Cote, Brochu and Plante-Dube being the major players. But at P&P we don't believe knowing anything about anything is a prerequisite for making the right call, so we're confidently claiming they'll grab #8 with less difficulty than Mark Recchi.
9. Calgary
After exhaustively reading reviews of Calgary restaurants on Yelp! and looking at pictures of dinosaurs, we've deduced that Calgary should be in good shape to pull off the unprecedented "Gretzky" - a second straight 9th place finish. Sure, you may say, they've graduated Stenning, whose 24th-place finish earned her first-team All-the-Canadians-in-the-Box honours, and Altomare (56th last year) but the Dinos should return Grace "Kary the Team On My Back" Kary (15th in 2011). The team will need their supporting cast (Pike? L'Heureux?) to fill in the gaps if they're going to Connect Five.
10. Queens
With rumours of cheerleaders on the team, we think that Boyd may have gone off the deep end this year, but at the same time, it’s so crazy it just might work. They lose their number 2, Kallos, and 5, 6, 7 (Prufer, Wilson, Roth). Stephanie Hulse is sure to put up some big races, alongside teammate Veronica Allan, not to mention rookie and OFSAA steeple champ Julie-Anne Staelhi. They’ve even got former Marauder Sara Giovanetti in the mix, which makes this look like a team that has the potential to move their way up the rankings. Not one to withhold trenchant analysis, the head coach had this to say: "The girls' team? Yeah, they're pretty fast too. It's actually disconcerting. I won't expect them back from a workout for another few minutes, and then they'll show up and I'll just be sitting in the car eating a slice of pumpernickel bread."
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