BETHLEHEM, PA. – The Cortland men's cross country team finished in fourth place out of 37 schools in the White Division of the Lehigh University Paul Short Run. The Red Dragons' 132 team points were just five behind third-place Coast Guard and 11 behind second-place Swarthmore. Ramapo finished first with 105 points, and Cortland was more than 100 points ahead of the fifth-place school Muhlenberg.

All 10 of Cortland's runners finished in the top half of the 292-competitor field. Ryan Konotopskyj (East Amherst/Williamsville North) finished 12th in 26:39 over 8,000 meters and Cabel McCandless (Lindenhurst) was 15th in 26:47. Noah Simatei of NYIT won the race in 25:54.

Chris Thorpe (Pine Bush) hit the finish line in 28th place (27:12) and Grant Boyd (Newburgh/Newburgh Free Academy) was 33rd (27:20). Mike Verde (Hopewell Junction/Arlington) rounded out the Red Dragon top five in 60th place (27:54), while Clayton Santiago (Bethpage) (77th, 28:14) and Cody Laettner (Williamsville/Williamsville North) (79th, 28:16) also broke the top 80.

Hunter Braun (Victor) turned in a time of 28:38 for 105th place. Brian Thurston (Long Beach) finished 141st (29:19) and Pat Carew (Levittown/Division Avenue) was 146th (29:26).

Cortland returns to action on Saturday, Oct. 6 at the Houghton Highlander Invitational.

Complete Results:
Men's White Division
Women's White Division
Links to All Race Results

Coach's Corner - Comments from Cortland Head Coach Steve Patrick following the Paul Short Run:

Today was a really good day for the program!  The conditions were pretty strange, in that they have had so much rain down there in the past couple of weeks the course was incredibly soft and slippery.  By the time we raced, well over 1,000 athletes had already run, which slowed things down for us quite a bit.  We're definitely proud of how the teams competed today.
 
The men's fourth-place finish was quite good, especially considering that the quality of the field was much stronger this year than in years past.  For some perspective, last year we were third with over 200 points.  Our top four guys were pretty darn good, as they usually are, even with a few bumps in the road today, but freshman Mike Verde was probably the star of the day – running a PR on a course that isn't very fast on a good day, but was especially slow under those conditions.  He actually ran faster today than what today's top guy (Ryan Konotopskyj) did two years ago as a freshman, so that is quite exciting for us.  Our next two guys (Clayton Santiago and Cody Laettner, who are both freshmen) also ran PRs for the 8k distance, which is a pretty wonderful statement about how things are going for our program.
 
The women's ninth-place finish was a huge step in the right direction, especially considering that we had a lot of mistakes out there today.  The women's team has been doing a lot of great things in terms of practice and attitude, so it was great that even without a 'perfect' race by the team that we improved a great deal as compared to last year (where we placed 15th).  Sophomore Sam Himes, returning from an injury that kept her out all summer, ran a really mature race that really helped the program, as did juniors Courtney Maurin and Jill Leggiero.  The efforts by those three ladies was pretty darn good, and indicates that there is room to go faster soon!  But the real star of the day, just like for the men, was a freshmen, as Tully's own Gabby Moncada had a huge breakthrough to move up to being our third woman on the day.  The third mile at Lehigh can be pretty tough and encourage people to give up, and Gabby had the fastest mile on the team on the way to a huge PR over 6,000 meters.  There's still a lot of places we can improve as a team, but we're real excited about where things are going!