OSWEGO, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team recorded a third-place finish at the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) Championships, hosted by SUNY Oswego at the Fallbrook Recreational Center.
 
Cortland finished with 94 team points, 10 ahead of fourth place Fredonia. Geneseo claimed its eighth straight title with 23 points, followed by Brockport with 35. Ten teams competed at the meet.
 
Two Red Dragons earned All-SUNYAC honors with top-15 finishes. Senior Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) was a second team honoree with a ninth-place time of 26 minutes, 9.4 seconds over 8,000 meters. Senior Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) earned a spot on the all-league third team with a 15th-place time of 26:23.6. A total of 103 runners competed. The top five finishers are first team all-league, spots 6-10 are second team, and 11-15 are third team. Geneseo's Nick Andrews won the race in 25:28.5.
 
Cortland's next 10 finishers all placed in the top half of the field. Sophomore RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) placed 25th in 27:05.5, senior Harry Tomasi (Port Jervis) was 30th in 27:20.5 and senior Ryan Cory (Beacon) finished 31st in 27:28.8. Senior Tom Adamescu (Canandaigua/Canandaigua Academy) hit the finish line in 36th place (27:42.2), followed closely by sophomore Robert Davidson (Setauket/Ward Melville) in 38th (27:45.9) and senior Ben Zinger (Liverpool) in 39th (27:51.1).
 
Freshman Brandon Mulholland (Syracuse/Westhill) finished in 41st place (28:05.4), sophomore Matthew Mullen (Mastic/William Floyd) was 46th (28:31.4), Daniel Patrick (Manlius/Fayetteville-Manlius) placed 48th (28:39.5) and graduate student Clayton Santiago (Bethpage) finished 50th (28:45.7).
 
Cortland senior Adam Schreiber (Williamson) was recognized after the meet as one of the two SUNYAC Men's Cross Country "Elite 20" award winners. The honor, modeled after the NCAA ELITE 90 program, is given to a student-athlete on a team at the conference finals site with the highest cumulative grade point average. Schreiber, who was honored along with Plattsburgh's Noah Bonesteel, is a sport studies major with a 4.0 grade point average.
 
Cortland will compete at the NCAA Division III Region Three (Niagara Region) Championships Nov. 12 in Rochester.

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

We're really pleased with the effort out of the women's team today! The third place finish is a nice improvement as compared to last year, and having two all-conference performers is certainly something to be proud of. In our short team meeting back in Cortland, I pointed out to the women that two of our top five (Vanessa Burkard and Marlee Angus) had strong races and made good decisions during the race that helped out the team quite a bit, and that the other three ladies (Khalifah Tracey, Devin Reilly, and Adrienne Martin) really had 'breakout' races that almost allowed us to grab that 2nd place spot in the team standings. There's been a lot of good progress through the season, and we're quite excited about what the next two weeks look like as we head into the NCAA regional championships! We also want to celebrate the final cross country effort from seniors Rachel Castello and Francesca Frasco, and thank them for their time with the program.
 
Unfortunately, we didn't have as successful a day on the men's side, even though we managed to hang on to a 3rd-place team finish. We're certainly happy to have all-conference honors earned by Hunter Brignall and Cam Szabo, and really want to highlight strong efforts from Cam and from RJ Davis to finish more or less where we were confident they could be. Both of those guys put us in a strong position with their individual efforts, so that is certainly a step in the right direction. We also had some pretty reasonable efforts out of a number of guys who were non-scorers, so we have reason to be encouraged about what the future holds for us. We're looking forward to resetting and rebounding for the regional championships in two weeks! We know that seniors Clayton Santiago and Alex Brodmerkel finished their cross country careers today, and appreciate the dedication they have had during their time here; we also want to congratulate Adam Schreiber for sharing the 'Elite 20' Academic Award for the highest grade point average of cross country athletes in the conference – that is quite an achievement!