HOUGHTON, N.Y. - Four runners placed in the top 50 of a 108-runner field to lead Cortland's women's cross country team to a sixth place showing at the Houghton College Highlander Invitational.

Cortland finished with 196 points, four better than St. John Fisher. Geneseo took first place out of 12 schools with 38 points.

Junior Courtney Maurin (Pine Bush) finished in 27th place in 26:50.8 in muddy conditions at Houghton's Field of Dreams 6,000-meter course. Marissa Lathrop of SUNY-ESF won the race in 24:40.3.

Junior Jill Leggiero (East Greenbush/Columbia) crossed the finish line 31st in 27:09.8. Sophomore Catherine Zamroz (Levittown/Island Trees) was 45th in 27:58.7 and freshman Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) placed 48th in 28:03.0.

The next three Red Dragon finishers were within three places of each other. Freshman Gabby Vogt (Lynbrook) was 62nd in 29:04.7, followed by sophomore Shannon Imbornoni (Plainview/Our Lady of Mercy Academy) in 64th place (29:07.5) and freshman Dorena Motta (Manahawkin, NJ/Southern Regional) in 65th place (29:20.4). Freshman Kristen LaBianca (Syosset) rounded out the Cortland contingent in 94th place (32:31.8).

Cortland heads to Glassboro, N.J., next Saturday for the Rowan University Inter-Region Border Battle.

Complete Results:
Women
Men

Coach's Corner - Comments from Head Coach Steve Patrick following the Houghton Highlander Invitational

For the second time in as many weekends, we were running under the very strange conditions of warm, humid, and incredibly muddy!  I suppose that we should be thankful that the rain stopped and the forecasted thunder and lightning storms never materialized.
 
We chose to focus a number of our top performers on getting a quality workout in this weekend, so we weren't running at full strength.  That being said, we certainly had some really nice performances!  For the ladies earning 6th as a team was a pretty solid accomplishment; Courtney Maurin, Jill Leggiero, Catherine Zamroz, and Gabby Vogt had really great efforts, especially as compared to our first 6k of the season just three weeks ago.  We had a lot of positive movement as compared to some other runners we have seen consistently across the season!  It's a lot of fun to see the hard work paying off and the improvement coming!  There's still work to be done, but we have to feel pretty darn good about where we are right now.
 
While the men's team didn't fare as well on the scoreboard, the work that we did was pretty outstanding.  Using a few key individuals from other schools that we have seen at other meets already this year, our top two freshmen guys – Mike Verde and Clayton Santiago – have shown great improvement.  They have gone from being about 30 seconds behind those 'markers' to 30 seconds in front over the span of the three weeks from their first 8k until today.  That's quite good progress, and should be quite helpful for us down the stretch.  Pat Carew also had a pretty stellar effort today, especially when looking at some of 'index runners' from other programs.