BETHLEHEM, PA. – The Cortland men's cross country team had each of its top seven runners place in the top third of the field, led by winning effort from Ryan Cory (Beacon), and the Red Dragons finished in first place out of 40 schools in the White Division of the Lehigh University Paul Short Run.
 
Cortland, ranked fourth in the latest Division III Niagara Region rankings, finished with 115 points, followed by Hamilton (146), Nazareth (170), Catholic (182) and Franciscan (Ohio) (206) in the top five.
 
Cory won the 8,000-meter race, which featured 340 runners, with a time of 24 minutes, 54.9 seconds. Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) placed ninth in 25:22.9, followed by Harry Tomasi (Port Jervis) in 15th (25:33.2) and Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) in 19th (25:37.3).
 
Matthew Mullen (Mastic/William Floyd) finished in 72nd place in 26:39.0, with RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) close behind in 76th place (26:40.6). Clayton Santiago (Bethpage) placed 108th in 27:03.2.
 
Cortland returns to action at the Houghton Highlander Invitational on Oct. 8.

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

Since the men raced first, I'll talk (write?) about them first.
 
Probably the best thing I can say is to quote a coach I have a lot of affection and respect for, who once told me to 'never underestimate the value of winning.' I've found that to be sage advice. We were pretty disappointed to be assigned to the 'white' division for this year's Paul Short run, but I'm certainly pleased with how the guys responded. I'm very confident that being in a deeper, more competitive race would have really allowed some of the guys to open up and really push to their limit a bit more – but with that being said, life is about how you deal with the opportunities presented to you and how you overcome the challenges in your way. The breakthrough run on the day would probably belong to Cam Szabo, who passed 101 people from the mile mark to the 5k mark! He showed that you can get out smart and be very competitive in a race, as he finished in 19th overall. We still have a number of rough edges to our performances, but there is a month until the conference meet, and six weeks remaining until the NCAA Regional Championships/National Qualifier, and today was certainly a big step in the right direction as a program.
 
If you glanced at our women's results you might not be as impressed as I am, so I want to share some details that aren't obvious from the final results. First, we went from 20th at the mile with 581 points to 10th at the 2-mile mark, with 317. While a couple of the runners that were in our top 5 had some issues that limited performance from the 2-mile to the finish, that only cost us 26 points from the 2-mile to the finish. That speaks volumes about the depth of where the women's team is right now, in that they were able to absorb some less-than-ideal results as a team. We had some specific goals for the first, second, and third miles of the race, and we were very good at achieving them today. In fact, seven of the eight finishers ran lifetime PRs for the 6k, and the 8th was less than 25 seconds off of her best. If I was going to pick a top performer – and this would be really tough with so many women running so well – it would probably be Marlee Angus for dropping from a 25-minute PR to a 23:40 PR in the 6k.