CHESTER, PA. and CLINTON, N.Y. – The Cortland men's outdoor track and field team earned a combined six victories as the Red Dragons sent competitors to the Widener University Danny Curran Invitational on Friday and Saturday and the Hamilton College Invitational on Saturday.
 
Widener Highlights:
 
Coltrane Goring (Los Angeles, CA/Notre Dame) was victorious in the 400-meter dash and was part of the Red Dragons' winning 4x100-meter relay team. He was first of 51 in the 400 meters in 49.83 seconds, which currently ranks sixth in the All-Atlantic Region Track and Field Conference (AARTFC). The combination of Brett Morse (Saratoga Springs), Evan Jensen (Red Hook), Goring and Aaron Jones (Buffalo/Hutch Tech) won the 4x100 relay in 42.78 second, presently fourth in the AARTFC. Zach Nyhart (Hamburg) won the pole vault with a height of 4.60 meters (15' 1"), also an AARTFC mark.
 
Jones finished second of 63 competitors in the 200-meter dash in 22.07 seconds, while Goring was sixth in 22.38 seconds. Jones is currently fourth and Goring is 12th in the event in the AARTFC rankings. Jones and Morse were third and fourth, respectively, in the 110-meter hurdles. Jones currently ranks third in the AARTFC at 15.21 seconds and Morse fifth at 15.24 seconds.
 
Ryan Cory (Beacon) and David Soto (Warwick/Warwick Valley) each met AARTFC standards in the 1,500 meters. Cory finished second of 53 in 3:59.11, which ranks seventh, and Soto was fourth in 4:01.17, which ranks 14th.
 
Five Red Dragons met the AARTFC qualification mark in the 10,000-meter run. Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) was fifth of 33 runners in 32:06.08, followed by Mike Verde (Hopewell Junction/Arlington) in sixth (32:12.40). Harry Tomasi (Port Jervis) placed 11th (32:39.35), RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) was 15th (32.53.91) and Rob Davidson (Setauket/Ward Melville) finished 16th (32:55.68).
 
Brandon Root (Bellmore/John F. Kennedy) was the other Cortland athlete to hit an AARTFC mark at Widener with his fifth-place time of 56.95 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles.
 
Other Cortland highlights during the two-day meet included: Jensen, Justin Schrom (Richmondville/Cobleskill-Richmondville) and Doug Knapp (Brooklyn/Xaverian) placing fourth (50.98), fifth (51.22) and sixth (51.27), respectively, in the 400 meters; Jensen and Schrom finishing seventh (22.63) and ninth (23.06), respectively, in the 200 meters; Malachi Williams (New Haven, CT/Amistad Academy) finishing fifth of 54 in the 100-meter dash (11.26); Ryan Serp (Commack/Fayetteville-Manlius) placing fifth in the 110-meter hurdles (15.92); Roland Zanger (Port Jervis) with a sixth-place effort in the high jump (1.82 meters/5' 11.5"); and Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) and Hunter Braun (Victor) finishing seventh (4:03.33) and eighth (4:04.21), respectively, in the 1,500 meters.
 
Hamilton Highlights:
 
Cortland won three events at the Saturday competition - Mitchell Makowski (Webster/Webster Thomas) in the hammer throw (49.99 meters/164' 0"), Clay Santiago (Bethpage) in the 1,500 meters (4:08.69) and Christopher Blake (Red Creek) in the 400-meter hurdles (1:00.94). Makowski's effort in the hammer was an AARTFC qualifier. He also placed fifth in the shot put (13.06 meters/42' 10.25") and eighth in the discus (36.43 meters/119' 6").
 
Ryan Joule (Staten Island/Susan B. Wagner) was fifth in the javelin throw (43.60 meters/143' 0") and Santiago finished sixth in the 800 meters (2:02.13). John Nethercott (Fayetteville/Fayetteville-Manlius) was eighth of 21 in the 400-meter dash (53.55) and 11th of 35 in the 200-meter dash (23.63). Ben Fenton (Horseheads) placed 10th in the 800 meters (2:07.39), Mike Alvarez (New Windsor/Newburgh Free Academy) was 12th in the 1,500 meters (4:25.18), and Alex Strack (Saranac) finished 12th in the 100-meter dash (11.94).

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

There's a lot to process here! What a great weekend for Red Dragon Track and Field!
 
To begin with, we're very fortunate to have the ability to split the squad between two meets. That level of support allows us to be in a good situation in terms of making sure that those who are ready to compete get the opportunity to.

Overall, the distance squad seemed to excel at both meets. At Widener and at Hamilton, we went in with specific race plans and objectives to achieve, and did a very nice job of hitting them! For the most part the 5ks at Hamilton were ahead of the plan (which is pretty awesome), and being able to see Savannah Adami open her collegiate career with a solid performance in the 1500 while Clay Santiago took home the win in the men's 1500 was pretty fantastic!

The weather wasn't ideal at Hamilton today, so seeing a strong high hurdles from Nik Knobloch along with a great 400 hurdles from both Sam Becker and Christopher Blake (who earned the win over the men's field) was certainly a wonderful thing to see! We had a number of other strong performances at Hamilton today, notably Matteson Donnelly's great long jump (tying her lifetime best of 4.85/15'11"), and some really good hammer throwing as Nick Kaires, Nick LaRocque, Nick, uh, I mean Sarah Parr and Nick – seriously, why do I keep doing this? – Morgan Sharer (!) all had lifetime bests in the event! My apologies, it's been a long couple of days! We also saw nice PRs from Catie Lally in discus and Liz Spencer in shot put!
 
We were fortunate to have better weather at Widener, and we certainly took advantage of it! Our women's track races all went quite well – I'm even pleased with the 4x1 that missed an exchange because what they were doing was good, and it is so early in the season. We can learn from mistakes, and it is better to make them now then when it counts!

For our highlights on the day, I'd have to highlight Autumn Pittman, with two PRs in the 100 and 200, Lauren Anderson in the high hurdles, Katherine McDowell with a strong run in the 400 and 200, Kat Burgess in the 400 hurdles, Cat Zamroz with a huge PR and a very well-run race in the 1500, and Vanessa Burkard and Khalifah Tracey in their first-ever 10,000.

The men had a similar great weekend on the track; I'd like highlight Ryan Serp in the high hurdles with a new lifetime PR, Coltrane Goring for opening the season sub-50 in the 400, David Soto, Cameron Szabo and Hunter Braun for running strong in both the 1500 and 800, where we worked on a number of things to benefit us later in the season, and our men's 10k group of Hunter Brignall, Mike Verde, Harry Tomasi, RJ Davis, and Rob Davidson. As a group, only one of these guys had ever even run a 10k before, and they went out, executed their race plan quite well, and all ran under the Regional Championship Qualifying time. Hunter, Mike, and Harry handled the pacing chores over the first 6000 meters; both Hunter and Mike ran the final 4000-meters under 5-minute mile pace, and Harry ran the final 2000 meters nearly under 5-minute mile pace!

But the breakthrough performance of the weekend had to go to Brandon Root, who broke the 57-second barrier in the 400 hurdles in his second collegiate effort in the event. He ran a tough race where he really had a strong step pattern that minimized stutters, and it paid off for him!
 
We are excited to open up the Stadium Complex for the 2022 season next Saturday and Sunday, as we host the Red Dragon Open and Multi.