BETHLEHEM, PA. – Led by four top-80 performances, the Cortland women's cross country team finished in ninth place out of 43 schools in the White Division of the Lehigh University Paul Short Run.

The Red Dragons ended with 340 points, three ahead of 10th-place Scranton and 10 behind eighth-place Geneva. Haverford took the team title with 73 points, followed by Eastern (189) and Clarion (199).

Eliza Nichols (Smithtown/Smithtown West) claimed the top finish for Cortland with her time of 24:45 over 6,000 meters. Sam Himes (Buffalo/Sweet Home) was 52nd in 24:47. Post University's Kendall Fitzgerald won the race in 22:43.

Gabby Moncada (Tully) recorded a 75th-place time of 25:12. Sydney Smith (Niskayuna) followed close behind in 77th place in 25:13. Three other Red Dragons were in the top half of the 357-runner field. Courtney Maurin (Pine Bush) finished 109th (25:35), Jill Leggiero (East Greenbush/Columbia) placed 123rd (25:43), and Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) hit the finish line in 162nd place (26:16).

Cortland will head to the Houghton College Highlander Invitational next Saturday.

Complete Results:
Women's White Division
Men'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!