ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team finished in eighth place out of 16 teams at the University of Rochester Yellowjacket Invitational. The 8,000-meter race was held at Genesee Valley Park.

Cortland finished with a score of 254 points, just 12 behind seventh-place RIT and 11 ahead of ninth-place St. John Fisher. Division I Cornell was the team champion with 20 points, followed by Geneseo with 73 and Division I Buffalo with 93.
 
Mike Verde (Hopewell Junction/Arlington) was Cortland's top finisher in 39th place out of 226 finishers. He covered the course in 26:54.5. Geneseo's Tyler Senall was the individual champion in 25:57.6.
 
Ryan Cory (Beacon) placed 42nd overall in 26:56.1 and Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) was 76th in 27:33.5. Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) placed 83rd (27:50.6), Gavin Watkins (Endicott/Owego Free Academy) was 85th (27:52.2), Clayton Santiago (Bethpage) finished 94th (28:01.6) and Harry Tomasi (Port Jervis) was 95th (28:02.9).
 
Cortland will compete at the Harry F. Anderson Invitational, hosted by Division II Roberts Wesleyan University, next Saturday.

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

Today was a really good day for us! Looking at the final placings you might think that we don't have the highest standards, but we went into today with some specific goals in mind regarding our pacing, placing, and team tactics.
 
The women's team pulled off a pretty excellent day, running in tight packs near their assigned splits through the 4k mark, as was our plan going into the race. For 10 of the squad – nearly two-thirds of us – this was the first 6k they had ever run, so we wanted a low-stress learning experience. It was nice to not only be able to gauge what our team is capable of doing, but also for the chance to scout a number of other teams in the region and conference. One of the things we had a LOT of fun with today was moving up through the field. At the 400 mark, our top pace group was close to 25 spots from the end of the race. By the finish, Vanessa Burkard had passed around 125 athletes, while the trio of Cat Zamroz, Rachel Castello, and Khalifah Tracey had moved past over 100 athletes! That's a great way to build confidence and learn racing tactics for future efforts that matter more to the program. It's also pretty nice to be ahead of a team ranked in the top 10 of the region, and close to others ranked as well!
 
The men's team had some very strong individual efforts, and had a nice result against regionally ranked opponents as well – beating four teams ranked ahead of us, and being in pretty close proximity to a 5th. As with the Lady Red Dragons, the men were working on specific goals for the race with an eye to the championship season. Today was a pretty good stepping stone in the right direction for us, but we have a lot of work to put in still. While we had a number of strong individual efforts, our execution of working together wasn't as strong as we will need it to be for the end of the season. I'm glad we saw this in September so that we can hopefully have it addressed for later in the season! I do want to emphasize that we had a number of really strong individual efforts: a lot of the team ran the race as negative splits, meaning that the 2nd half of the race was faster than the first – Mike Verde (47 seconds), Ryan Cory (46 seconds), and Robbie Davidson (32 seconds) led the way with the biggest drops over the 2nd half of the race!
 
We're back in the Rochester area next week competing at Roberts Wesleyan College, which has been a fun, fast course in previous years.