BETHLEHEM, PA. – The Cortland women's cross country team finished in third place out of 36 schools in the White Division of Lehigh University's Paul Short Run. 
 
Cortland, ranked sixth in the Niagara Region, posted a final team score of 173 points. Coast Guard was the team champion with 104 points, edging RIT by three points. Following Cortland, Catholic (190) and Scranton (221) rounded out the top five. 
 
Cortland's top five runners all placed in the top 50 out of 379 entries. Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North) led the way for the Red Dragons with a 29th-place time of 23 minutes, 38.4 seconds over 6,000 meters. Adelphi's Katherine Marsh won the race in 22:08.7 
 
Adrienne Martin (Cincinnatus/Norwich) finished in 34th place in 23:46.2, followed directly by Alexa Wolcott (Wyoming/Pavilion) in 35th (23:48.9) and Khalifah Tracey (Greenville) in 37th (23:49.2). Devin Reilly (Irvington) crossed the line in 43rd place (23:58.6). 
 
Rounding out the Red Dragons' top seven were Pipher Reid (Greene/Chenango Forks) in 56th place (24:16.9) and Sydney Smith (Greenville) in 79th place (24:37.0).

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

We certainly started off today on a good note, as Robby Davidson and Josh Koeppe started us off with strong performances in the open race. Both men did a really good job of following our race plan, and were able to put themselves in position for a good performance in a huge race.

In the Brown division the men's team came up a bit short for where we wanted to be. The higher quality of the race may have been a bit intimidating, and we didn't quite race to what our standard should be. But that's the point of coming to this race and seeing such strong competition. I'm quite confident that we can learn from this and progress forward.

The women closed the day on a high note, as they moved into a podium spot by taking third! While we definitely made some mistakes, this experience provides us with some really good improvement on the season and shows us what we are capable of. Devin Reilly and Melissa Innocent were our stars on the day with exceptional races to put us into a great team finish.

We will be splitting the team this week, as some folks have the opportunity to race at Hamilton next Saturday, while those who aren't racing get to focus on getting a bit more training in.