GENESEO, N.Y. – Vanessa Burkard (Newfane), Rachel Castello (Cheektowaga/West Seneca East) and Khalifah Tracey (Greenville) each placed in the top third of the field to help Cortland finish in 14th place out of 29 schools at Geneseo's Mike Woods Women's Cross Country Invitational.
 
Cortland finished with a score of 394 points, eight points behind Gettysburg and 45 ahead of New Paltz. The host Knights won the title with 27 points, easily ahead of Case Western (118), Middlebury (129) and RIT (136).
 
Burkard finished in 21st place out of 322 runners in 23 minutes, 9.4 seconds on the 6,000-meter course at the National Warplane Museum that also will serve as the site for the NCAA Division III Region 3 Championships in mid-November. Geneseo's Kathleen McCarey earned top individual honors in 21:43.0, followed by teammate Rachel Hirschkind in 21:58.4.
 
Castello crossed the finish line in 76th place in 24:28.8 and Tracey was 97th in 24:50.5. Cortland's next two runners were Marlee Angus (Penfield) in 133rd place (25:23.9) and Devin Reilly (Irvington) in 139th place (25:28.2).
 
Rounding out the Red Dragons' top eight finishers were Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) in 173rd place (25:59.4), Kayla Pucci (Goshen) in 208th place (26:42.9), and Sydney Smith (Greenville) in 216th place (26:48.6).
 
Cortland travels to Houghton College next Saturday for the Houghton Highlander Invitational.

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

We're very thankful that we had the chance to get on the regional championships course – while it is somewhat simple, learning how to run it – as well as to scout out the way most of the region will run it – was pretty important. While we didn't have the team result for either squad that we were hoping for, we also had a number of good performances, and are confident that we have learned some good things to apply moving forward.
 
Obviously Vanessa Burkard had a very strong day leading the Lady Red Dragons – her last 200 meters was run at under 6 minute per mile pace, which is quite impressive, and really bodes well as we look forward to the championship season. It certainly puts in her in a good position to compete at the conference and regional meets! Marlee Angus and Devin Reilly did a great job of working together, and overall had a strong effort. They both needed to step up today as we were missing some of our 'usual' top five, and we're quite pleased with the effort they showed! The staff is also pretty happy with how receptive they are to working to improve, even after a good day.  It's a good sign that nearly the entire team had 6k personal bests today (if I'm correct, Vanessa, Rachel Castello, Khalifah Tracey, Marlee, Devin, Kayla Pucci, Deirdre Sullivan, and Hannah Johansen all had PBs for the distance), even on a hot day after a hard week of training.
 
In the men's race, it was a lot of run to watch Ryan (Cory) and Mike (Verde) move up through the field. I had them at about 160th at the 2k mark, so they passed around 125 people over the next 6k. Both of those guys made a pretty amazing step forward today! Cam Szabo had a nice effort to break the 27-minute barrier; Clayton Santiago did a great job leading his group through the 6k mark, and then really crushed the last loop on the course to sneak under 28 minutes. Firstyear Ben Fenton and senior David Soto both showed a really nice progression through the race, with each 2000-meter loop being faster than the previous one! That's a good way to work on being tough, and it's fun to fly by people at the end who had gone out too fast!
 
We're looking forward to the trip to Houghton next weekend to compete at the Highlander Invitational; personally I'm excited about our Alumni Program Update happening this Thursday evening via Zoom – you can find information and register to attend here: Cross Country/Track and Field Program Update