ITHACA, N.Y. - The Cortland men's cross country team sent a handful of runners to compete at the non-team scoring Cornell University John Reif Memorial Run on Friday afternoon.
 
Tom Adamescu (Canandaigua/Canandaigua Academy) was Cortland's top finisher in 19th place overall, and 11th among collegiate entries, in a field of 31 runners with a time of 16 minutes, 48.3 seconds over 5,000 meters. Kevin Robertson of Syracuse University won the race in 14:55.6.
 
Marc Lucasey (Dobbs Ferry) finished 20th overall in 16:58.2, with Brandon Mulholland (Syracuse/Westhill) (22nd, 17:08.0), Nate Wilsoncroft (Horseheads) (23rd, 17:22.2) and Alex Brodmerkel (West Babylon) (25th, 17:30.0) rounding out the Red Dragons' top five.
 
Cortland's women did not have any competitors at the race.
 
Cortland returns to action on Saturday, at the SUNYAC Championships in Oswego.

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

This year, we were just using this meet to work on some specific racing tactics that weren't as strong as we expected to have last week. We didn't run any of the women because their races last weekend were generally pretty positive, so we only brought a few of the men over.
 
I'm very pleased to be able to report how much better we were in general today! Tom Adamescu not only had a great performance as our top finisher on the day, but really responded well to instruction during the race. He put himself in the position to do well by taking an intelligent chance, and it paid off. Marc Lucasey and Alex Brodmerkel were much stronger in the middle of their race, and worked together quite well through the 2-mile mark which is what we were expecting. I'm quite glad that we  took this small group over to Cornell to have a 'live race' chance to correct some mistakes from last week.
 
We're able to return our focus to prepping for the SUNYAC championships next Saturday, as well as keeping an eye on the future with the NCAA qualifier on November 12th.