ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Cortland finished in sixth place out of 16 schools at the University of Rochester Men's Cross Country Yellowjacket Invitational. The 8,000-meter race was held at Genesee Valley Park.

The Red Dragons finished with a team score of 198 points, 65 ahead of seventh-place St. John Fisher. Geneseo took the team title with 49 points, followed by Ithaca with 56.

Cabel McCandless (Lindenhurst) was Cortland's top finisher with a 16th place time (15th among collegiate entries) of 27:13.6. Rochester's Hunter Phinney won the race in 26:35.1. A total of 215 runners competed.

Ryan Konotopskyj (East Amherst/Williamsville North) was 29th overall in 27:37.5 and Chris Thorpe (Pine Bush) placed 38th in 27:57.6.

Three other Red Dragons finished in the top half of the field. Mike Verde (Hopewell Junction/Arlington) was 94th (29:20.2), Clayton Santiago (Bethpage) finished 100th (29:26.4), and James Forte (Merrick/Sanford H. Calhoun) was right behing Santiago in 101st place (29:28.7).

Rounding out the Cortland top eight were Pat Carew (Levittown/Division Avenue) in 133rd place (30:24.9) and Cody Laettner (Williamsville/Williamsville North) in 139th place (30:50.2).

Cortland will head to Roberts Wesleyan next weekend.

Complete Results:
Men
Women

Coach's Corner - Comments from Head Coach Steve Patrick following the women's and men's races at Rochester:

Today was the first 6k for the women, and the first 8k for the men of the season. Cross country is a strange sport – the championship distance increases by 20% for the women and 60% for the men. That's pretty insane! You don't see that in a lot of other sports, and it is quite an adjustment for our younger folks.
 
The men's team had overall a pretty good day.  Freshmen Mike Verde and Clayton Santiago had really nice efforts in their first 'real' distance race to be our 4th and 5th runners. While we weren't firing on all cylinders during the race today, we're quite pleased with the 6th place team finish. Returning to the Rochester area next weekend for another 8k should be a pretty good opportunity for our guys to start to learn the distance.
 
The ladies had a number of good efforts, but we still have a ways to come on running together as a team. The longer distance today gave us a bit of trouble, so I'm quite glad that we have the chance to go back to a 5k distance next weekend in Rochester to work on those tactics in a little less stressful of an environment. For both genders, today was a very good learning experience, and we're quite pleased as coaches with our the teams are responding to the challenges we are putting in front of them.