PITTSFORD, N.Y. – The Cortland men's cross country team opened its 2025 season with a fourth-place finish out of 10 schools at the St. John Fisher Rodenbeck Invitational.
 
Cortland finished with a team score of 106 points, two better than Houghton and 11 behind third-place Nazareth. Geneseo won the title with 17 points, followed by Penn St. Behrend with 87.
 
Senior Brandon Mulholland (Syracuse/Westhill) was Cortland's top finisher in 14th place out of 135 runners with a time of 19 minutes, 59 seconds over 6,000 meters. The University at Buffalo's Cameron Bogdan, as an individual entry, won the race in 18:52.5.
 
Sophomore Hunter Rautenstrauch (Buffalo/West Seneca West) finished in 26th place in 20:17.1, sophomore Carter Naginey (Groton) was 33rd in 20:31.6 and firstyear Chris Jones (Riverhead) placed 39th in 20:43.1. Rounding out Cortland's top seven were firstyear Landon Fracasse (New Paltz) in 45th (20:56.8), sophomore Jordan Wingert (Verona/Vernon-Verona-Sherrill) in 49th (21:05.2) and sophomore Zachary Arria (Baldwinsville/C.W. Baker) in 52nd (21:08.2).

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

Wow – what a great start to the season!

We were certainly fortunate to have a couple of things outside of our control workout well for us today – the weather was pretty close to ideal, and the field for the race was darn near perfect for what we were hoping to accomplish today.
 
I have to give the team a great deal of credit today, as we had two expectations for today's effort: to work well together, and to stay tough on a course that isn't challenging – no crazy hills on this one – but is demanding in that it is very easy to lose focus on, as it is constantly going up or down, or making small turns. We met both challenges in an exceptional manner!
 
When nearly everybody does this well, it's hard to pick a highlight on the team, but we have a clearly obvious one – seeing Liam Boyd back in a uniform, and not only that, performing well! Truly inspirational on our end; one of the best things is after the race – in which Liam ran very even splits for each of the three loops of the course, something we aspire to do – he was critical of his performance, looking for ways to improve. He's invested in doing this well, and that's a great example for the rest of us to heed.
 
We'll make the short trip to Cornell the first Friday of September to have a fun little dual meet with Cornell!