CLINTON, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team earned a fourth-place finish out of eight schools at the Hamilton College Invitational.
 
Cortland finished with 122 points. Hamilton won the event with 20 points, followed by Utica with 52.
 
Lenny Diaz (Newburgh/Newburgh Free Academy) led Cortland with a 29th-place time of 28 minutes, 39.3 seconds over 8,000 meters. Utica's Bennett Melita won the race in 25:11.9. A total of 83 runners competed.
 
Daniel Patrick (Manlius/Fayetteville-Manlius) placed 32nd in 29:07.6. Cortland's next six finishers placed between 40th and 53rd place. Eric DeHart (Apalachin/Vestal) was 40th in 29:50.7, Zachary Arria (Baldwinsville/C.W. Baker) finished 42nd (30:06.1), Chris Dalton (Howard Beach/Archbishop Molloy) was 45th (30:12.4), Mike Alvarez (Newburgh/Newburgh Free Academy) placed 48th (30:29.6), Anthony Cawley (Jamesville/Jamesville-DeWitt) finished 51st (31:02.3) and Joshua Osae (Valley Stream/Valley Stream South) crossed the finish line 53rd (31:04.1).

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

We changed things up this year – while often we would not race most of the team, for the women's side we brought everybody who was healthy. We felt after Paul Short that we needed to work on racing more than anything else, so that became our focus. We really took the first mile very easy to focus in on the middle and ending of the race – not the best strategy if we were looking to compete today, but highly important for our long-term development.
 
Overall it was a great day for the women's team as we nearly everybody produced strong efforts! In particular, Deirdre Sullivan produced a great performance – Liv Balfe, Sammie Salisbury, and newcomer Kelly Newman all had efforts that were notably strong as well.
 
On the men's side we were a bit more following our typical plan where this weekend is more about an opportunity for folks that have been out of previous meets to get another experience and work out some things. From that side, I'd like to commend a couple of first-year folks that got in their first 8k of the year – Zachary Arria and Chris Dalton. The first 8k is always a challenge as it is so much longer than what you are used to in high school, so the transition is quite a challenge! It was nice tok see both of these guys get through their first in a reasonable way – with some points to learn from still – with the aim of improving on where they are for the upcoming weeks.
 
We make the trip down to Southern New Jersey next weekend to compete at the Rowan University 'Border Battle,' which is typically a deep meet on a fast but fun and challenging course.