BETHLEHEM, PA. – The top seven Cortland women's cross country runners all placed in the top third of the field and the Red Dragons finished in ninth place out of 45 teams in the White Division of the Lehigh University Paul Short Run.

Cortland finished with 256 points. Haverford won the team title with 152 points, followed by NYU (171), Christopher Newport (177), Eastern (Pa.) (193) and Waynesburg (201).

Sam Himes (Amherst/Sweet Home) led the Cortland contingent with a 23rd-place finish out of 372 runners. She traversed the 6,000-meter Lehigh layout in 22:57.3. NYU's Siena Moran was the winner in 21:52.4.

Sydney Smith (Niskayuna) turned in a 38th-place time of 23:11.4, Madison Ciuffetelli (Dix Hills/Half Hollow Hills East) was 57th in 23:36.2, and McKenzie Dombroski (Chittenango) placed 64th in 23:43.0.

Courtney Maurin (Pine Bush) logged a 79th-place time of 23:56.4. Cat Zamroz (Levittown/Island Trees) finished 102nd (24:13.5) and Jill Leggiero (East Greenbush/Columbia) was 110th (24:17.2).

The Red Dragons will head to Canton, N.Y., next Saturday to compete at the St. Lawrence University Ronald C. Hoffmann Invitational.

Complete Results

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

This was a pretty great day for us down in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania!  The Paul Short Run is one of the best collegiate cross country meets in the country, with 4 different races per gender for collegians.  Being a part of that atmosphere is just a great learning experience and opportunity for our team, and we're thrilled that they took advantage of it!
 
The men had a pretty great day!  Of the 15 men that ran, I'm pretty sure that 13 ran their fastest 8k ever, and the other two are returning from injuries that significantly limited their training through the summer.  It was a lot of fun to be able to tell that guys that the last time we had a team that put three men under 26 minutes – 2013 – we were able to do some pretty special things at the conference and regional meet.  Of course 2019 is a different year, but it is a good marker that we are on the right track as a program!
 
A wise coach once told me to never underestimate the value of winning, so we definitely want to celebrate Cabel McCandless's accomplishment today.  To provide a little context, at the two-mile mark where I was recording splits and yelling things to them that probably just sounds like gibberish, Cabel and Chad Dunham were probably in about 30th place.  They made a really smooth move together to take over the lead somewhere around the 2.5 mile mark, and really dropped the hammer on the lead group over the 4th mile.  We've known that they were physically capable of this for a while, but it's great to see them realize it mentally now!  The rest of the team did pretty similar things in terms of being really assertive through the middle of the race and working with each other to get some big improvements.  It's also great that the guys are recognizing that there is still a lot of work to do; while this was a nice accomplishment, we don't want to allow this to be the highlight of the season.
 
The Red Dragon women had another strong weekend as well, pretty filled with PRs for the 6k distance.  Overall we ran pretty tough, but didn't quite reach the level we are capable of yet.  All fifteen women that raced today had a VERY fast last 1200 meters – which is a good sign in that it shows that physically they still had something 'left' and that we can go faster overall.  We're certainly quite pleased about how we did today; it's more about that we have to reset our expectations and reset how we see ourselves.  Having that knowledge should be a great confidence boost for us moving forward!  Sophomore Sydney Smith (which is fun to say aloud!) is a good representation of this – a week ago she ran a very good race at Letchworth to PR with a 23:50, running miles of 6:31, 6:24, and 6:18; her final 1200 was at 6:08 pace.  That was really good!  At Paul Short, she ran 6:07, 6:09, and 6:51; her final 1200 was at 5:24 pace!  Now her PRE is 23:11!  It's a fantastic step in the right direction, but we know – and most importantly she knows – that she can go even faster still!
 
We're excited to head up to Canton, NY this weekend to preview the Atlantic Regionals course.  We're more focused on training through this meet and working to close the spread of our team, which will be good for us down the road in the championship meets.