CLINTON, N.Y. – Ten Cortland runners placed in the top 30 in a 63-runner field at the Hamilton College Women's Cross Country Invitational.
 
Cortland finished third out of five teams in the final team scoring with 70 points. Hamilton won the title with 17 points and Utica was second with 39.
 
Alexa Wolcott (Wyoming/Pavilion) was the Red Dragons' top finisher in 10th place in 19 minutes, 56.5 seconds over 5,000 meters. Hamilton's Keira Rogan took the individual title in 17:20.9 and her teammate Sylvie Najarian was second in 19:05.4.
 
Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North) placed 12th in 20:01.2, Deirdre Sullivan (Tappan/Tappan Zee) was 16th in 20:12.1 and Devin Reilly (Irvington) finished 18th in 20:14.9.
 
Cortland's other top-30 performers included: Anne Barney (Oakland, NJ/Indian Hills) in 22nd place (20:28.2); Brooke Keitel (Manorville/Eastport-South Manor) in 23rd place (20:36.6); Kristin Ieva (North Babylon) in 25th place (20:46.3); Julia Benton (Addison) in 27th place (21:01.3); Bri Ostheller (Penfield) in 28th place (21:01.9); and Phoebe Peer (Saranac Lake) in 30th place (21:16.6).

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.