LOGAN TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The Cortland women's cross country team, ranked 10th in the Niagara Region, finished in 14th place out of 31 teams in the championship race of the Rowan University Border Battle.
 
Cortland finished with 372 points, eight behind Stevens Institute and 38 ahead of Ramapo. Johns Hopkins easily won the team title with 18 points, followed by Rowan with 121.
 
Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North) finished in 27th place out of 265 runners in 22 minutes, 24.7 seconds over 6,000 meters. Adriana Catalano of Johns Hopkins won the race in 21:25.8.
 
Cortland's next four finishers placed in the top 100. Devin Reilly (Irvington) was 90th in 23:59.3, followed by Anne Barney (Oakland, NJ/Indian Hills) in 92nd (24:05.0), Deirdre Sullivan (Tappan/Tappan Zee) in 93rd (24:05.5) and Brooke Keitel (Manorville/Eastport-South Manor) in 98th (24:09.6). Closing out Cortland's top seven were Phoebe Peer (Saranac Lake) in 134th place (24:49.7) and Julia Benton (Addison) in 137th (24:54.3)
 
Jade Hornick (Valley Stream/Valley Stream South) was Cortland's top finisher in the open race in 25:39.1.
 
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.