ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team, ranked fifth in the Niagara Region, finished in third place out of 14 schools at the Roberts Wesleyan Harry F. Anderson Invitational. 
 
Geneseo won the team title with 20 points, followed by Daemen with 79, Cortland with 84 and Nazareth with 114. 
 
Hunter Brignall (Seneca Falls/Mynderse Academy) finished second out of 181 runners on the 8,000-meter course in 24 minutes, 48.1 seconds. Geneseo's Nick Andrews won the race in 24:37.6. Brignall finished nearly seven seconds ahead of the third-place runner. 
 
Brignall was one of nine Red Dragons to finish in the top 70 at the invitational. Cameron Szabo (Owego/Owego Free Academy) finished 22nd in 26:17.6, Matthew Mullen (Medford/William Floyd) was 27th in 26:26.5 and RJ Davis (Cicero/Cicero-North Syracuse) finished 35th in 27:00.6. 
 
Adam Schreiber (Williamson) turned in a 44th-place time of 27:25.2, Paul Tommolino (Stony Brook/Ward Melville) finished 46th in 27:29.3 and Nate Wilsoncroft (Big Flats/Horseheads) was 50th in 27:41.1. Gavin Watkins (Endicott/Owego Free Academy) crossed the line in 54th place (27:44.1) and Daniel Patrick (Manlius/Fayetteville-Manlius) was 67th (28:10.3).

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

I don't get to say this as often as I like, but today was a really fun day! It's always great to have a lot of highly successful performances, as well as to have a number of parents and alumni show up in support.
 
We had a pretty rare meet today in that besides a couple of spots where folks weren't able to finish, we had very strong efforts from nearly everybody on both teams today. When nearly 50 athletes were racing, to have over 90% perform well is a pretty special day!
 
Some highlights from today would be not only Hunter Brignall for the men who set a new Cortland record for the course, but also Cameron Szabo who moved into the top-10 all-time list with his effort. It's nice when we can be on the same course from year to year to have some accurate records. Other notable performances on the men's side include Adam Schreiber with a personal best of close to 75 seconds over the distance, and having three firstyear athletes (Liam Boyd, Hector Ramos, and Kevin Moser) all run the first 8k of their career under 30 minutes!
 
For the women, Khalifah Tracey, Alexa Wolcott, and Adrienne Martin all recorded their name in our all-time top-10 list; while firstyears Anne Barney and Melissa Innocent are now in the top-10 for firstyear athletes. Those alone make today quite exciting! Having 8 women under 20 minutes for the 5k is a great step forward for the program, and having a spread of under 40 seconds for our top 8 is also a wonderful measure. The women's team is doing an excellent job of working with each other out on the course – something they are doing well with in practice – and it is paying dividends for us.
 
Some of the squad will make the trip down to Lehigh University this upcoming weekend to compete at the prestigious Paul Short Invitational, which is a great opportunity to test ourselves against strong competition.