SELINSGROVE, PA. - Led by a school-record performance in the 4x400-meter relay, the Cortland men's outdoor track and field team finished in third place out of 60 schools at the All-Atlantic Region Track and Field Conference (AARTFC) Championships. The two-day event was hosted by Susquehanna University. 
 
Rowan won the team title with 97 points, followed by Carnegie Mellon (48), Cortland (42), Rochester (41) and RIT (37) in the top five. 
 
The combination of Aaron Jones (Buffalo/Hutch Tech), Coltrane Goring (Los Angeles, CA/Notre Dame), Harrison Gavalas (Southampton) and Douglas Knapp (Brooklyn/Xaverian) won the 4x400 relay in 3:12.12, about a half second ahead of second-place Geneseo. The time broke the previous school record of 3:13.22 set by Eric Banks, Zac Farnham-Haskell, Phill Wiltshire and Gino Bisceglia in 2011, and it also broke both the AARTFC meet record and Doug Arthur Stadium facility record. 
 
Brett Morse (Saratoga Springs) finished second out of 32 competitors in the 110-meter hurdles in 14.42 seconds. Jones also qualified for the finals with his fifth-place prelim time of 14.92 seconds, but he didn't finish in the finals. 
 
Amarian Hughes (Newburgh/Marlboro) led a contingent of three Cortland top-10 triple jumpers. He was second out of 25 with a distance of 14.52 meters (47' 7.75"), Jean-Andre Sassine (Queens Village/The Lawrenceville School (NJ)) was fourth at 14.37 meters (47' 1.75") and Hagie Sesay (Buffalo/Hutch Tech) placed ninth at 13.74 meters (45' 1"). 
 
Goring finished fifth of 28 in the 400-meter dash in 48.31 seconds. Evan Jensen (Red Hook) was 11th in 49.18 seconds. In the 200-meter dash, Gavalas was sixth of 36 in 22.01 seconds and Jensen placed 19th in 22.39 seconds. 
 
Isaiah Brunache (Bennington, VT/Mount Anthony Union) was sixth of 32 in the shot put with a toss of 15.64 meters (51' 3.75"). Austin Garske (Rocky Point) finished eighth of 34 in the 400-meter hurdles (53.91). 
 
Nick Kaires (St. James/Smithtown East) just missed a scoring spot with a ninth-place discus throw of 44.10 meters (144' 8"). Dane Sorensen (Warwick/Warwick Valley) was 10th of 24 in the pole vault at 4.42 meters (14' 6") and Mitchell Makowski (Webster/Webster Thomas) finished 12th of 30 in the hammer throw (52.25 meters/171' 5"). 
 
Rich Samuels (Wallkill) finished 14th (1:55.27) and Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) was 24th (1:57.02) out of 37 runners in the 800 meters. Morse and Matthew Schaffert (Lockport) placed 14th (6.52 meters/21' 4.75") and 15th (6.48 meters/21' 3.25"), respectively, in a field of 32 in the long jump, and Schaffert was 24th of 48 in the 100-meter dash in 11.11 seconds. 
 
The top eight individual finishers and the top three relays earn All-AARTFC honors. 
 
Cortland awaits the announcement of qualifiers for the NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships, which be held May 25-27 at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford. The final participant list will be posted on NCAA.com on Friday, May 19, by 8 p.m. Eastern time. The top 22 declared individuals in each event and the top 16 declared relay teams in each relay (4x100 and 4x400) qualify for nationals. As of late Thursday night, Cortland athletes ranking in the national qualifying spots are: 
 
Zach Nyhart (Hamburg), 5th, Pole Vault, 5.07 meters (16' 7.5") 
Hughes, 5th, Triple Jump, 15.19 meters (49' 10") 
4x400-meter relay (Jones, Goring, Gavalas, Knapp), 8th, 3:12.12 
Morse, tied for 11th, 110m hurdles, 14.31 
Brunache, 13th, Shot Put, 16.59 meters (54' 5.25") 
Samuels, 20th, 800 meters, 1:50.61

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

There's a lot to unpack from this meet. You could see the pressure that was evident – not just for our team, but across all the teams competing. The conference meet has pressure, but it's very different in that there's pressure to compete. At this meet, especially because of its nature as a 'last chance' to extend your season, there's a very different experience that can be more challenging.
 
As excited as I am for our men's 4x400 relay – where we made some changes to the lineup and the order, so there's a lot of credit to those guys for performing so well – my heart breaks for the women's 4x100! They didn't make an obvious mistake in the baton pass – the timing was great, and a coaching peer even commented to me on how good the spacing was. It's the first time that pair had an issue all year (including all of our practices), and just came at a really inopportune time.
 
Perspective is hard at meets like this, but we really should be proud of where we are as a program, even if we didn't have everything line up as well as we had hoped today. Nearly every one of our athletes, if you had asked them in August, would have been pretty ecstatic to have the performances that got them to this meet and/or the performances at this meet, so it is good to keep that level of perspective in mind. As we improve, we re-set our goals and expectations (as we should), but we also need to celebrate our progress!
 
I will also make special mention of Nick Kaires, as he actually finished his season with a lifetime best in the discus throw, which is a pretty cool way to go!
 
We're looking forward to the short trip to Rochester to compete at the NCAA Division III Championships next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!