ITHACA, N.Y. – The Cortland women's indoor track and field team resumed its schedule after more than a month-long mid-semester hiatus by competing at the Cornell University Upstate Challenge. The meet featured primarily seven Division I schools and the University of Toronto, along with Cortland and Ithaca. The pentathlon was conducted Friday and the remainder of the meet was held Saturday.
 
Harley Buczkowski (Holland Patent) placed sixth out of 15 competitors in the weight throw with a toss of 15.38 meters (50' 5.5") that met All-Atlantic Region Track and Field Conference (AARTFC) qualifying standards.
 
Taylor Hunter (Buffalo/Tapestry Charter) finished fourth of 25 in the 200-meter dash in 26.67 seconds, which qualifies for the AARTFC Championships. She also was sixth of 18 in the 60-meter dash in 8.24 seconds (8.10 prelims). Joining Hunter in the top 10 of the 200 meters was Steffany Batista (Spring Valley/Ramapo) in fifth place (26.73) and Kelly Gardner (Lake Ronkonkoma/Sachem North) in ninth place (27.25).
 
Malley Bowen (Owego/Tioga) finished fifth of 12 in the 60-meter hurdles in 9.74 seconds. Molly Baker (Newark Valley) was Cortland's top pentathlete with a third-place score of 2,502 points. Her highest-scoring events were the 60-meter hurdles, where she notched 618 points (10.52 seconds) and the high jump, where she scored 599 points (1.48 meters/4' 10.25").
 
Cortland will send competitors next Saturday to both the Cornell Kane Invitational and the Utica College Pioneer Open.

Complete Results (Women and Men)

Coach's Corner - Comments from Head Coach Steve Patrick:

The hardest thing about this meet is for the team to understand that they are tired, and not physically able to really perform at a high level yet.  That's hard to accept sometimes, and people can end up a little frustrated when they shouldn't be.  A lot of these folks have been hard at work for two weeks and just need some time to recover.  That's OK for now though, as we are just working on building a big base for our conditioning and working on technical skills.
 
The men's short sprinters had a really strong day in the 60 and 200 – while it's easy to highlight how well Peyton Lalone did in the 200, the other three guys (Kai Bryant, Chjuvaughn Cameron and Liam Joyce) had technically sound races, and were all pretty close to their lifetime bests!  The top Lady Red Dragons in the 200 had pretty similar results – while freshmen Taylor Hunter and Steffany Batista, along with junior Kelly Gardner didn't have lifetime bests, they all put together nice races that are a good indication that what we are making good progress towards our goals.
 
Pole vaulting went quite well today – not only did Dane Sorensen and Ryan Lawless have solid days in the open pole vault, but all three heptathletes (Isaiah Brooks, Zach Kashmer and Kellen Martin) jumped really well.  It's encouraging to see the team embracing the philosophies and techniques we are working on, and the success it is leading to!
 
It's hard to limit my comments to just a couple of events, as we are quite pleased with how things turned out today – we are also pretty thankful that Cornell stayed committed to running the meet today, and that they moved the schedule up by a couple of hours to allow teams to travel safely.  We're looking forward to having more of the team return tonight for training, our two opportunities to compete next weekend (at Utica College and at Cornell again), and surprisingly, for classes to start on the 28th!