LOGAN TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The Cortland women's cross country team, with only five runners competing, finished 26th out of 35 schools in the championship race at the Inter-Regional Border Battle, hosted by Rowan University at the Gloucester County Dream Park.
 
Cortland ended with a score of 660 points. Johns Hopkins was the team champion with 28 points.
 
Cat Zamroz (Levittown/Island Trees) finished 92nd out of 275 runners with her time of 24 minutes, 39.3 seconds over the 6,000-meter layout. Isabella Miller of Haverford was the individual champion in 21:33.8.
 
Marlee Angus (Penfield) posted a time of 25:08.4 for 119th place and Sydney Smith (Greenville) was 148th in 25:41.7. Deirdre Sullivan (Tappan/Tappan Zee) finished in 177th place (26:17.7) and Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) registered a 185th-place finish (26:26.7).
 
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.