HOUGHTON, N.Y. – The Cortland women's cross country team finished in ninth place out of 20 teams at the NCAA Division III Niagara Region (Region 3) Championships, hosted by Houghton College.
 
Cortland and Nazareth each scored an eighth-place 203 points; Nazareth officially finished eighth and Cortland placed ninth based on head-to-head matchups between the top five runners on each team, with the Golden Flyers winning that tiebreaker, 3-2. Geneseo won the team title with 20 points, followed by NYU with 53 and RIT with 153. In addition to the 20 complete teams in the scoring, six other schools fielded incomplete teams.
 
Alexa Wolcott (Wyoming/Pavilion) earned all-region honors by virtue of her 27th-place finish out of 147 runners with a tine of 22 minutes, 37.8 seconds over 6,000 meters. The top 35 runners earned all-region recognition. Penelope Greene won the race in 20:53.3.
 
Cortland's other six competitors finished in the top 65 of the field. Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North) finished in 39th place (22:53.8), followed by Emma Trefzger (Horseheads) in 42nd (22:56.9) and Adrienne Martin (Cincinnatus/Norwich) in 45th (22:59.3). Khalifah Tracey (Greenville) crossed the line in 50th place (23:03.8), with Sydney Smith (Greenville) in 51st (23:05.2) and Devin Reilly (Irvington) in 65th (23:28.8).
 
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. The 32-team national field and individual qualifiers will be announced Sunday at 3 p.m. on NCAA.com.

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

First, I'd like to thank the friends, fans, and family that made the trip to Houghton today to cheer for the Red Dragons.

We certainly started things off quite well. Our men bounced back from what we thought was a less-than-ideal team performance at SUNYACs to step up into fourth place as a team. The guys ran really touch and inspired today! We took some chances individually and it really paid off. Obviously congratulations to Cam Szabo for finishing his collegiate cross country career with his second all-regional award, and to Hunter Brignall for not only the all-regional recognition but also on earning a spot to represent Cortland next weekend at the NCAA Championships!

The ladies didn't have as great of a day, but that's ultimately OK as it is a good learning experience overall for us. The meet was a bit unusual this year; losing a team spot in a tiebreaker is of course frustrating, and only being a few points out of finishing as high as third shows how much you have to be on your game at this meet. We didn't quite do that today, but I'm certainly proud of this group for what they've achieved across the season. Big congratulations to Emma Trefzger for a stellar performance, and of course to Alexa Wolcott for earning all-regional honors. We also want to thank Khalifah Tracey for her time with us, as she graduates this December, a semester early!