HOUGHTON, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team finished in fourth place out of 25 schools at the NCAA Division III Niagara Region (Region 3) Championships, hosted by Houghton College.
 
Cortland finished with 160 points. Geneseo won the title with 41 points, followed by NYU with 57 and Brockport with 87. Cortland finished two points ahead of fifth-place Rochester.
 
Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) and Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) each repeated as all-region runners by virtue of their top-35 finishes in the 176-runner field. Brignall finished fourth in 24 minutes, 29.1 seconds over 8,000 meters and Szabo was 25th in 25:21.5. They placed 31st and 33rd, respectively, last season. Geneseo's Nick Andrews repeated as the regional champion with a time of 24:12.6.
 
Cortland's other five competitors finished in the top 80 of the field. RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) placed 39th (25:45.1), followed by Adam Beach (Red Hook) in 46th (25:54.6) and Robert Davidson (Setauket/Ward Melville) in 48th (25:57.0). Adam Schreiber (Williamson) finished 57th (26:05.8) and Matthew Mullen (Medford/William Floyd) was 77th (26:44.9).
 
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 qualfiers 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!