LOGAN TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The Cortland men's cross country team finished in 12th place out of 33 schools in the championship race at the Inter-Regional Border Battle, hosted by Rowan University at the Gloucester County Dream Park.
 
The Red Dragons finished with 332 points, one shy of 11th-place Christopher Newport, six behind 10th-place Rochester, and nine points better than the 13th-place host Profs. Geneseo won the title with 39 points, followed by Lynchburg with 90 and Johns Hopkins with 127.
 
Ryan Cory (Beacon) and Mike Verde (Hopewell Junction/Arlington) finished near the top of the pack in the 286-runner field. Cory was 18th with a time of 25 minutes, 49.4 seconds over 8,000 meters, with Verde only a few seconds behind in 20th place at 25:52.3. Lynchburg's Frank Csorba won the race in 24:42.7.
 
Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) finished in 85th place in 27:14.1, followed by Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) in 108th place in 27:32.8. Rounding out Cortland's eight-man contingent in the race were Clayton Santiago (Bethpage) (126th, 27:54.8), Gavin Watkins (Endicott/Owego Free Academy) (138th, 28:00.5), Harry Tomasi (Port Jervis) (153rd, 28:15.7) and Ben Fenton (Horseheads) (211th, 29:24.6).
 
Cortland also fielded seven runners in the open race at the event and finished in fifth place out of 26 schools with 164 points. Lynchburg won that title with 51 points. David Soto (Warwick/Warwick Valley) was the top Red Dragon in 21st place (28:24.4) over 8,000 meters, Rob Davidson (Setauket/Ward Melville) was 32nd (28:41.0) and Ben Zinger (Liverpool) placed 44th (29:06.3). RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) was 51st (29:17.0), Adam Schreiber (Williamson) finished 54th (29:21.9), Jed Swayze (Preble/Homer) crossed the line in 59th place (29:31.6), and Josh Koeppe (Bridgeport/Cicero-North Syracuse) was 82nd (30:16.0).
 
The Red Dragons will compete at the Cornell John Reif Memorial Run on Friday.

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

The heat was definitely a factor today for all the athletes, but that can make the times a bit skewed, which can be frustrating. One of the clearest examples of this was Cat Zamroz – she ran about 10 seconds faster two years ago, but was almost 50 places better this year, even though the field had about 50 more runners! We feel pretty comfortable with the knowledge that Cat had a very strong individual effort, even though the time didn't necessarily show it.
 
Cat and Deirdre Sullivan both had very strong races for us today – they were able to execute their race plan well and put in a strong effort. We certainly didn't have the results for the women's program we were expecting today; illness, injury, and some big races nerves took a pretty big toll on us. We've had a very strong season to this point, so we were bound to have a 'down' week. We're expecting this to be an opportunity for learning and growth to move forward into the conference meet in two weeks, which we are fortunate enough to host!
 
The men's finish overall was pretty strong! Six of the teams finishing in front of us are nationally ranked; the team that edged us out by 1 point entered the weekend ranked 35th in the country, while we beat the team ranked 33rd in the country! While the rankings aren't the most accurate measure, they do provide a nice means for comparison! Of the other five teams in front of us, they are all ranked between 3rd and 5th in their regions. Ryan Cory and Mike Verde made a strong statement today by finishing in the top 20 of such a deep field. We definitely had some miscues with the rest of our pack, but mostly smaller mistakes that if we can fix should allow us to be in good contention moving forward. The men we had run in the 'open' race, led by David Soto, ran quite well to earn 5th as a team. It had gotten quite hot by then, so the times were definitely impacted, but we ran pretty tough as a group, and a 5th place finish says a lot about the quality of our depth right now.