LOGAN TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The Cortland men's cross country squad, ranked 10th in the Niagara Region, placed 17th out of 30 teams at the Rowan University Border Battle.
 
The Red Dragons finished with 438 points, 90 better than New Paltz and 23 behind both Ursinus and Southern Virginia. Lynchburg claimed the team crown with 49 points.
 
Cortland was led by Robert Davidson (Setauket/Ward Melville), who finished 47th out of 287 runners with an 8,000-meter time of 25 minutes, 48.7 seconds. Emmanuel Leblond of Johns Hopkins was the individual champion in 23:52.9.
 
Cortland's next three finishers ended up in the top half of the field. Adam Schreiber (Williamson) was 81st in 26:25.1, Matthew Mullen (Medford/William Floyd) finished 101st in 26:44.8 and Paul Tommolino (Stony Brook/Ward Melville) placed 118th in 26:57.8.
 
The Red Dragons' next three runners crossed the finish line with 21 seconds of each other. Hunter Rautenstrauch (Buffalo/West Seneca West) placed 157th in 27:31.9. Vincent Smaldone (Red Hook) finished in 166th place (27:43.4) and Ronan Pollard (Lindenhurst) was 172nd (27:52.4).
 
Lenny Diaz (Newburgh/Newburgh Free Academy) was Cortland's top finisher in the open race in 28:29.4.
 
Cortland's next competition will be the Cornell University John Reif Memorial Run on Friday at 4:30 p.m.

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

We like the chance to run on this course against some different competition, but we do wish it would stay a little cooler for us!

In the women's championship race, Melissa Innocent set the new course best for Cortland today, which is pretty fantastic! She ran a very tough race from beginning to end which is great to see right before championship season. Firstyear Brooke Keitel had an especially good effort as well in that race to earn a spot in our 'top ten' list for firstyears.

For the women's open race we were pleased with how all five of our finishers did, but the huge PR (and really fast 3rd mile) from Jade Hornick was pretty special to see.

On the men's championship race, Robert Davidson moved into our top 10 list with a very strong effort especially in the second half of the race; Hunter Rautenstrauch, Vincent Smaldone, and Ronan Pollard all earned new spots in the firstyear 'top 10' list for the men today as well.

The biggest highlight from the men's open race is Anthony Rizzo in his first 8k ever finishing only 1 second away from breaking 30 minutes. It was a great way to see his college career progressing.