PREBLE, N.Y. – The Cortland women's cross country team finished in fourth place at the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) Championships, hosted by the Red Dragons at Dwyer Memorial Park.
 
Cortland finished with 108 points, just two shy of third-place Plattsburgh (106) and 14 behind second-place Brockport (94). Ten schools competed, with nine officially posting team scores. Geneseo won its 10th straight league title with 17 points.
 
Sophomore Vanessa Burkard (Newfane) was Cortland's top individual with a 16th-place time of 26 minutes, 10.0 seconds over a muddy and messy 6,000-meter layout. She missed all-league honors by one spot, as the top five are first team all-conference, spots 6-10 are second team, and 11-15 are third team. Geneseo's Kathleen McCarey won the race in 23:57.8. A total of 87 runners competed.
 
Junior Rachel Castello (Cheektowaga/West Seneca East) placed 26th in 27:08.7, followed by senior Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) in 30th place (27:34.8). Rounding out Cortland's top seven were graduate student Cat Zamroz (Levittown/Island Trees) in 33rd place (27:42.4), junior Marlee Angus (Penfield) 34th (27:42.8), freshman Devin Reilly (Irvington) 35th (27:46.4) and freshman Deirdre Sullivan (Tappan/Tappan Zee) 59th (29:27.5).
 
Cortland will compete at the NCAA Division III Region Three Championships Nov. 13 at Geneseo.

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

Hosting a conference championships is a difficult undertaking, so I want to make sure that we start by thanking the people that went above and beyond to make this happen! In no particular order, I'd like to thank Cortland County and in particular the Highway Department for working with us to make Dwyer Park accessible and ready, the grounds crew at SUNY Cortland for their efforts painting and preparing the course, our athletic administration, but in particular Tom Cranfield for the behind-the-scenes work and Jaclyn Lawrence for a tremendous amount of management of the event today, Machel Phelps of the Cortland Regional Sports Council for helping secure the facility and working with us to manage the event, our athletic training staff, especially Celeste Boyer for taking care of the competing athletes, and from our staff coach Jordyn Naylon who spent countless hours measuring, marking, and preparing the course while serving as the meet director, as well as Bob Vidulich, a retired high school and SUNY Cortland cross country coach who was always ready and willing to drop everything and head out to the course to help make it ready.
 
With all the rain we had this week, the course was wet and muddy – there was very little that can be done. I watched two of our team slip and go down, and know that a number of other folks had a tough time as well. I'm pretty happy with the toughness those folks showed to get up and run when it counted. In some spots it was too deep for the spikes to make a difference! I feel like our women ran hard, but didn't get into the right position. I'm not displeased with the effort that we had overall, and am confident that this can be a good learning experience for us moving forward. In a smaller-sized field like this was, the race can get strung out pretty quickly, and we didn't catch the right groups soon enough. Courtney Schoepflin really had a strong performance on the day – probably the best on the team. She's really responded well over the past couple of weeks and has made the decision to be much more focused and tough, and it has paid off!
 
The men's race was pretty strange for us in that we had some really outstanding performances, and a few places where things didn't go as well as we were hoping for. Out depth really paid off a lot today – freshman RJ Davis made a tremendous move to jump up to be our 4th scorer today, which was pretty huge for us. Hunter Brignall really committed well today – in his second and third loops he moved up 7 people each time, and got a few more on the last loop to earn an all-conference spot. Obviously Mike Verde and Ryan Cory turned in exceptional performances, as both earned first-team all conference honors, along with induction into the SUNYAC Cross Country Hall of Fame! Last but not least, Gavin Watkins ran a really tough effort on the day – he made a great move on the second lap to move up, and really ran tough over the 2nd half of the course to hold onto his spot!
 
We get a solid couple of weeks of training and peaking in before heading to the Rochester area for the NCAA Regional Championships.