HOUGHTON, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team finished in fourth place out of 10 teams at the season-opening Houghton Highlander Short Course Invitational. 
 
Cortland finished with 102 points. Brockport won the team title with 36 points, followed by Rochester (54), Nazareth (83), Cortland and Houghton (104) in the top five. (NOTE: The team point totals in the online results are not calculated correctly.) 
 
Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) finished second out of 127 runners in 12 minutes, 5.7 seconds on a 4,000-meter course. He placed behind the winner, Jonathan Zavala of Brockport, by less than three seconds. 
 
RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) was 24th in 12:44.4, followed by Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) in 25th (12:44.9), Matthew Mullen (Medford/William Floyd) in 27th (12:46.8) and Brandon Mulholland (Syracuse/Westhill) in 29th (12:53.6). Rounding out the Red Dragons' top seven were Paul Tommolino (Stony Brook/Ward Melville) in 34th (13:02.0) and Marc Lucasey (Dobbs Ferry) in 35th (13:03.9).

Coach's Corner - Comments from Cortland head coach Steve Patrick:

It was great to get out and open the season with a nice short race where the regional championships will be. We were focused on pack running today, and we're quite pleased with how our teams worked together not only during the race, but also also in regards to how we went about our business over the course of the day.

While obviously our scorer performers performed well today, I'd especially like to point out sophomores Andie Rice and Paul Tommolino, who each had tremendous performances and have showed significant improvement versus last fall. We're quite proud of the progress they have made, and excited for what's to come!

We're still in the time of year where training is more important than racing, and are looking forward to solid efforts next week in practice, along with a short trip to Oneonta for a chance to preview the conference championship course.