HOUGHTON, N.Y. – The Cortland women's cross country team used a runner-up finish by Vanessa Burkard (Newfane) and five other top-20 showings to place second out of seven schools at the Houghton College Highland Invitational.
 
Cortland finished with 46 points, trailing only St. John Fisher (35) in the final team standings. RIT (73), Houghton (76) and Keuka (152) rounded out the top five.
 
Burkard covered the 6,000-meter course in 23 minutes, 23.02 seconds. Riley Corey of St. John Fisher was the individual champion in 23:03.78, while Burkard was more than 40 seconds ahead of the third-place runner.
 
Rachel Castello (Cheektowaga/West Seneca East) placed eighth in the 73-runner field in 25:07.53, Cat Zamroz (Levittown/Island Trees) was 11th in 25:24.62, and Sydney Smith (Greenville) finished 13th in 25:26.80. Marlee Angus (Penfield) and Sophie Steger (Montgomery/Valley Central) basically crossed the finish line at the same time, with Angus officially awarded 16th place (25:32.04) and Steger 17th place (25:32.09).
 
Devin Reilly (Irvington) posted a 23rd-place time of 25:48.61 and Courtney Schoepflin (Chaffee/Pioneer) was 26th in 25:57.50. Also earning top-40 placements were Kayla Pucci (Goshen) (32nd, 27:02.32), Emma Trefzger (Horseheads) (36th, 27:09.43), and Deirdre Sullivan (Tappan/Tappan Zee) (39th, 27:22.80).
 
Cortland travels to Glassboro, N.J., next Saturday for the Rowan Inter-Regional Border Battle.

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

With this being a smaller meet, it was a good opportunity to work on some specific aspects with the team. In particular, a few guys sacrificed their own individual performances to help pull some of the groups along to faster times. Mike Verde and Ryan Cory pulled our top five along to a very smooth 16:10 at three miles – definitely the fastest that Cam Szabo, Hunter Brignall, and Clayton Santiago have been out this year. Gavin Watkins, who is normally a part of our top grouping, held back to work to pull our next couple of guys through not just the 3-mile mark, but all the way to the 4-mile mark. Gavin reeled off the splits like a metronome, and did an excellent job of leading that group! With this being the first effort for the team to really push the pace earlier in the race, the guys responded quite well! As a wise coach once said to me, 'never underestimate the power of winning,' so we're certainly happy to walk out with the team title! I'd also like to make note of first-year RJ Davis, who had a huge breakthrough effort to be our 8th man on the day.
 
The women were also focused on some team racing, and while we made a couple more mis-steps, the coaching staff is quite pleased with the progress. We made a point of emphasis that we needed to do a better job of running together and speaking with each other more in the race, and the squad did an excellent job with that! While we have identified some issues that need addressing, that's the whole point – we present the team with a challenge in response to their performance, they respond, and then some new areas might arise that need addressing. We're thrilled with how the team is responding to our instructions, and willing to address areas that need improvement. Vanessa Burkard had an exceptional individual performance, especially considering that our race plan was intentionally vague for her for this week. We believe she produced an excellent performance, but still has a number of places where she can continue to improve, which is very exciting! Rachel Castello balanced leading her pace group with a very strong individual finish, and we want to commend Marlee Angus and Sydney Smith for very strong efforts on the day. We're also happy to have Cat Zamroz back with us today for both her performance and her leadership!
 
Up next is a big one for us, as we travel down the Southern New Jersey to compete in the Rowan Interregional Rumble, which should be a good chance to compete against a number of strong teams from other regions.