CLINTON, N.Y. - Junior Cabel McCandless (Lindenhurst) finished in 14th place and Cortland's top seven runners all placed in the top half of the field as the Red Dragons competed at the Hamilton College Men's Cross Country Short Course Invitational. The race was held at the Hamilton College Golf Course.

McCandless ended 14th out of 94 runners over the 5,000-meter course in 16:19.1. Delhi's Kobie Lane won the race in 15:23.4. Chris Thorpe (Pine Bush) finished 32nd (16:47.1), followed by James Forte (Merrick/Sanford H. Calhoun) in 36th (16:52.2).

Grant Boyd (Newburgh/Newburgh Free Academy) and Mike Verde (Hopewell Junction/Arlington) basically crossed the line together, with Boyd 39th (16:55.1) and Verde 40th (16:55.5). Hunter Braun (Victor) turned in a 42nd-place time of 16:59.4.

Cortland finished seventh in the final team standings with 151 points. Hamilton won the title with 48 points, followed by Ithaca with 53.

Cortland heads to the University of Rochester next Saturday for the Yellowjacket Invitational.

Complete Results:
Men
Women

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

Today was a really solid team effort for us! We didn't focus on racing for our best individual performances, but instead had a lot of our stronger runners hold back individually to work to bring the pack up to some faster performances.  I'm thrilled to be able to point out that we had some pretty successful results!  The work the teams did today should be very important to racing well during our championship season.

For the ladies, we have last week's 4k race at Fredonia to compare against – and even our top runners doing a workout ran faster than just a week ago, which is a really good sign!  A couple of our new team members had some pretty tremendous improvements as they have learned how to race smarter and tougher.

For the men, this week was actually our shortest race of the year as we had a 6k last week, and then generally move up to an 8k for the rest of the season.  It's fun to get out and have the chance to run something pretty fast, as well as to work together as a group.  Its very beneficial to us this time of year to allow our more experienced folks to help the new guys learn how to work the middle of the race, as well as to let guys really open up the last mile.