PITTSFORD, N.Y. – The Cortland women's cross country team began the 2025 season with a third-place finish out of 11 schools at the St. John Fisher Rodenbeck Invitational.
 
Cortland finished with a team score of 115 points, three better than Houghton. The University at Buffalo was the team champion with 24 points, followed by Geneseo with 31 points.
 
Over a 4,000-meter course, senior Alexa Wolcott (Wyoming/Pavilion) was the top Red Dragon finisher in 21st place in 15 minutes, 40.8 seconds. Vassi Klock of the University at Buffalo won the race in 14:25.8. A total of 150 runners competed.
 
Cortland's next three finishers basically finished at the same time. Junior Jewel Jones (Long Beach) was officially 29th in 15:58.5. Sophomore Phoebe Peer (Saranac Lake) and junior Melissa Innocent (Elmont/Valley Stream North) each finished in 15:58.6, with Peer officially 30th and Innocent 31st.
 
The Red Dragons' top seven also included firstyear Gwenivere Connelly (Port Jefferson/Earl L. Vandermeulen) in 45th place (16:31.6), junior Anne Barney (Oakland, NJ/Indian Hills) in 48th place (16:34.4) and sophomore Bri Ostheller (Penfield) in 55th place (16:45.5).

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!