LOGAN TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The Cortland men's cross country squad, ranked seventh in the Niagara Region, placed 19th out of 35 teams in the championship race at the Rowan University Border Battle.
 
The Red Dragons finished with 578 points. Elizabethtown also posted that score, but Cortland was awarded 19th place by having three of its top five runners finish better than their counterparts in Elizabethtown's top five. Carnegie Mellon was the team champion with 67 points, followed by Swarthmore with 144.
 
Brandon Mulholland (Syracuse/Westhill) led the way for the Red Dragons with a 63rd-place finish out of 327 runners in 25 minutes, 57.2 seconds over 8,000 meters. Haverford's Micah Lachman won in 24:28.8. Carter Naginey (Groton) also earned a spot in the top 100 with a 95th-place time of 26:22.9.
 
Hunter Rautenstrauch (Buffalo/West Seneca West) crossed the finish line 132nd in 26:52.8, Jordan Wingert (Verona/Vernon-Verona-Sherrill) was 174th in 27:27.5 and Landon Fracasse (New Paltz) finished 184th in 27:37.6. Rounding out the Red Dragons' top seven were Declan Butler (Yonkers/Archbishop Stepinac) in 206th (27:53.6) and Vincent Smaldone (Red Hook) in 208th (27:54.0).
 
In addition, Cortland finished fifth out of 20 teams in the open race with 138 points. Daniel Dunn (Oswego) finished 25th out of 215 runners in 27:42.6, Jack Hallahan (Clifton Park/Shenendehowa) was 26th (27:42.8) and Christian Wissa (Somers) placed 29th (27:47.6).
 
Cortland's next competition will be at the SUNYAC Championships in Plattsburgh on Nov. 1.

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

Quite a huge step forward for the women's team! We placed much better than last year, and were very close to a number of programs vying for post-season success; we were only 36 points behind perennial metro region qualifier Rowan which is a very tangible measure of improvement for us.

Seeing the top 5 women in the 'championship' race set new lifetime bests in the 5k was pretty fantastic; the top four ladies all entered our top 10 list for this course with Melissa Innocent re-setting our school record for the course; our fifth runner (Gwen Connelly) earned her spot on our firstyear top ten list for the course. Seeing all five of the women in the 'open' race run their fastest 6k as well was also great! We're quite impressed with how the team is working together in races to push each other and improve the overall team's performance. We still have some learning points for nearly everybody and are missing a few folks still with injury and illness, but we're quite pleased with the efforts on the day.

The men's squad had a strong number of personal bests as well, and four guys entered the all-time top ten list for firstyears, which bodes well for the future of the program. What's more impressive is that two of those guys (Danny Dunn and Jack Hallahan) did it from the 'open' race.

We had a number of 8k personal bests today, but we are definitely still wanting more. There weren't many big mistakes made, but a number of small opportunities that would have led to running 10-15 seconds faster; when the entire team can make that adjustment we're looking at a significant drop in points!

A real positive on the day is that despite having some injuries and illness today, the team performed fairly well as a unit especially in comparison to SUNYAC schools in the race.

We're having a final two weeks of training before heading up to Plattsburgh to defend team titles at the SUNYAC championships for both squads!