ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Cortland women's cross country team finished in eighth place out of 24 schools at the NCAA Division III Niagara Region (Region 3) Championships, hosted by the University of Rochester.
 
Cortland ended the meet with 228 points. Geneseo won the title with 18 points, followed by NYU with 79 and Ithaca with 155.
 
Cortland junior Khalifah Tracey (Greenville) earned all-region honors with a 28th-place time of 23 minutes, 47.2 seconds over 6,000 meters. A total of 167 runners competed, with the top 35 recognized as all-region. Geneseo's Kathleen McCarey won the race in 21:56.5.
 
Marlee Angus (Penfield) just missed the all-region cut with a 36th-place time of 24:00.5 All seven Cortland runners finished in the top half of the field. In addition to Tracey and Angus, Adrienne Martin (Cincinnatus/Norwich) was 48th (24:30.6), Devin Reilly (Irvington) finished 54th (24:43.2), Vanessa Burkard (Newfane) placed 62nd (24:58.9), Kristin Ieva (North Babylon) crossed the line 67th (25:08.0), and Sydney Smith (Greenville) finished 81st (25:36.0).
 
Geneseo earned an automatic berth to the NCAA Division III Championships by winning the regional title. Other regional finishers are eligible for at-large selections, and the top seven runners not on teams chosen for nationals qualify for the championship individually. Cortland is unlikely to earn either a team or individual spot at nationals.

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

It's sad that this is the last one of these for the year!
 
First, I'd like to make sure to congratulate our three all-regional award winners! It's always an accomplishment to earn a tangible recognition like this, and there's little room for error in that you only get the chance to earn it on one day in our sport. It's a credit to Khalifah Tracey, Hunter Brignall, and Cam Szabo that they were able to earn that through their performance out there today.
 
I'm incredibly pleased with the progress that the women's team made through the season. They've responded quite well to the challenges through the season with training and racing, and definitely worked hard out there today. While we didn't execute every part of the race plan as well as we had hoped for, we were tough when in counted, and that's a great place to head into the future from. Besides Khalifah, I'd like to make mention of the races that Adrienne Martin and Marlee Angus had today! Marlee in particular had an exceptional performance on the day, I believe it was the finest race of her cross country career!
 
The men also generally raced tough today. It was a challenge for us with Ryan Cory dealing with an injury for the second half of the season, as it limited his performance level, but that wasn't something that the guys used as an excuse to not push through the race today. Seeing Cam take the chance to really push today was great, but Harry Tomasi had a great rebound effort to close out the cross country season – it was a great measure of growth for him. RJ Davis came through with a strong performance today – he really pushed through the entire race, which was also a great step forward in growth for him.
 
We also need to acknowledge and thank the individuals that have definitely ran their final cross country race as Red Dragons – for the women, Marlee Angus and Vanessa Burkard; for the men Tom Adamescu, Ryan Cory, and Ben Zinger put on the red and white singlet for the final time. For Ryan, this marks the end of his career as an intercollegiate athlete as he graduates (a semester early!) in December before starting his career with Disney's Wide World of Sports. These folks have certainly experienced the widest range of what intercollegiate athletics can be as they navigated the COVID-19 pandemic during their intercollegiate careers.