CLINTON, N.Y. - Eliza Nichols (Smithtown/Smithtown West) led a group of three top-30 Cortland finishers with a 22nd-place showing, and four other Red Dragons also ended in the top half of the field, as the Red Dragons competed at the Hamilton College Women's Cross Country Short Course Invitational.

Nichols turned in a time of 16:12.0 over 4,000 meters. Grace Heller of Hamilton won the race in 14:44.2. Maddie Ciuffetelli (Dix Hills/Half Hollow Hills East) finished 24th in 16:17.6 and Sydney Smith (Niskayuna) was 28th in 16:21.6.

Sam Himes (Buffalo/Sweet Home) was Cortland's fourth-best finisher with a 43rd-place time of 16:52.8. Gabby Moncada (Tully) was close behind Himes in 46th place (16:55.9). Shayna Will (Endicott/Seton Catholic) and Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) registered nearly identical times. Will was 51st in 17:04.5 and Schopeflin was 52nd in 17:04.6.

Cortland finished fifth in the team standings with 130 points. Hamilton won the title with 33 points, seven points better than Ithaca.

Cortland returns to action next Saturday at the University of Rochester Yellowjacket Invitational.

Complete Results:
Women
Men

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.