ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Cortland women's indoor track and field team finished in seventh place at the Nazareth University Conference Challenge Cup.
 
The Red Dragons scored 33 points. The top three teams were Geneseo (224.5), Ithaca (121) and Rochester (62).
 
Autumn Pittman (Spring Valley/Ramapo) won the 200-meter dash in 26.16 seconds and finished second in the 60-meter dash in 7.91 seconds, both All-Atlantic Region Track and Field Conference (AARTFC) qualifiers.
 
Two other Red Dragons hit AARTFC marks at the meet. Kendall Sobczyk (Wheatfield/Niagara Wheatfield) posted a time of 8.04 seconds in the first round of the 60-meter dash. She finished seventh in the finals in 8.10 seconds. Jennifer Ndukwu (Queens/Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School) finished eighth in the weight throw with a toss of 15.14 meters (49' 8.25").
 
Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North) placed fifth in the 3,000 meters (10:42.24), Lillian Swyers (Peru) finished sixth in the triple jump (10.48 meters/34' 4.75") and Reilly Quinn (Morrisonville/Beekmantown) tied for sixth place in the high jump (1.53 meters/5' 0.25").
 
Other Red Dragons scorers at the meet included: Alexa Wolcott (Wyoming/Pavilion) in eighth place in the 5,000 meters (19:53.86), Ryan Stark (Schuylerville) in eighth place in the pole vault (3.15 meters/10' 4"), and AnJalyna Talmadge (Pine Bush) in a tie for eighth place in the high jump (1.48 meters/4' 10.25").

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

This weekend felt like much more of a meet where we were back into the swing of things, but we still certainly had an undercurrent of being a bit tired and flat from the hard work put in over the break. That's OK – the work we have put in leads to the potential for some big improvements as we move forward into a more regular schedule.
 
Of course we had some really nice results on the day! Certainly new school records for Amarian and Isaiah are noteworthy – as is improving on our national seed time for the men's 4x400 relay – but we also showed some good performances across all of our event groups. We had a much larger part of our distance squad racing at this meet, and we're quite pleased with how they performed – notably efforts in the mile from Kristin Ieva, Phoebe Peer, and Sammie Salisbury on the women's side and Matt Mullen, Brandon Mulholland and Vincent Smaldone from the men's team; Kelly Newman had a great 800 meter debut, and Jordan Wingert led wire to wire in his heat to drop his college best down a number of seconds. All four ladies in the the 3k (Anne Barney, Julia Benton, Melissa Innocent, and Deirdre Sullivan) performed quite well; Robbie Davidson and Adam Schreiber were strong performers on the day in the 5k.
 
For the field events, the women's triple jump squad of Lilly Swyers, Lexi Clark, and Hannah Nolan all had good efforts – including a PR from Lexi; firstyear Kayla Tretola showed out today in the throws with PRs in both the shot put and the weight throw.
 
The men's high jump was led by season's bests from Andrew Farnsworth and Taoig Cypher; firstyear Brady Melious posted a huge improvement on his college PR in the triple jump today. While we had a lot of good action out of the throws squad, firstyear Jason Zaita had a good measure of improvement in his shot put; fellow firstyear Ramel Radcliff had a great day in the weight throw surpassing the 14-meter barrier, and sophomore Luke Chamberlain got the weight out past the 15-meter barrier!
 
We've seen some exciting progress through these first couple of meets of 2025, and are looking forward to getting into the routine of the semester and seeing how we make the season unfold. Next up is the Ithaca Bomber Invitational, which is a nice short trip to a quality facility with good competition.