BETHLEHEM, PA. – The Cortland women's cross country team finished in 36th place out of 46 teams in the White Division of the Lehigh University Paul Short Run.
 
Cortland finished with 961 points. Amherst won the division's title with 135 points, followed by Emory with 152.
 
Cortland was led by Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North), who finished 155th out of 407 runners over 6,000 meters in 23 minutes, 31.2 seconds. RPI's Jules Bleskoski won the race in 20:42.5.
 
Kristin Ieva (North Babylon) placed 196th in 23:54.5 and Alexa Wolcott (Wyoming/Pavilion) was 214th in 24:05.6. Devin Reilly (Irvington) crossed the finish line 234th in 24:20.3.
 
Rounding out the Red Dragon top seven were Anne Barney (Oakland, NJ/Indian Hills) in 260th place (24:36.2), Julia Benton (Addison) in 263rd place (24:37.3) and Phoebe Peer (Saranac Lake) in 277th place (24:47.8).

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

It's quite an experience to be at and in a race like this! With four different divisions and an open race per gender, this is one of the premier collegiate cross country events in the nation!

I can't say that we performed the way we had been hoping to. In a lot of places the moment got the better of us a bit today. Hopefully this is a good learning experience that we can move forward from!

In the men's open race, five firstyear men had pretty good efforts: Ronan Pollard, Christian Wissa, John Van Scoyk, and Antoine Wheeler. We were focusing on being smooth through three miles and then really attacking. While all made some mistakes over the first three miles, all attacked the final two in great fashion!

In the women's open race Mia Hannan had a strong overall effort for a big PR, but the overall star of the day was Bri Ostheller who was pretty masterful out there! Bri was great over her first two miles and really attacked the incline of the third like to finish with a 77 second personal best!

Brandon Mulholland was the strongest performer in the men's White division, and was able to work on some good steps forward compared to the last couple of weeks. For the women's white division, Julia Benton probably had the strongest performance on the day when looking at how she was disciplined and focused early, and then tough later when the challenge was strong.

We are going to be separated a bit over the next few days with fall break, returning to formal practices on Thursday. A few folks will race at Hamilton College next weekend, while the bill of the team will focus on training through for the Rowan Border Battle on October 19th.