FREDONIA, N.Y. – Cortland's top seven runners each finished in the top 10 to lead the Red Dragons to the team title at the season-opening Fredonia State Women's Cross Country Invitational.

Cortland ended with a team score of 20 points, followed by Oswego at 39 points and Fredonia with 61 points.

Sophomore Sydney Smith (Niskayuna) and junior Sam Himes (Amherst/Sweet Home) recorded nearly identical times to claim second and third place, respectively. Smith finished in 16:45.58 and Himes was clocked at 16:45.70 on the 4,000-meter course. Oswego's Emily Gustafson was the individual champion in 15:49.00.

Freshman McKenzie Dombroski (Chittenango) and sophomore Madison Ciuffetelli (Dix Hills/Half Hollow Hills East) also notched nearly identical times for fourth and fifth place. Dombroski finished in 16:54.36 and Ciuffetelli covered the course in 16:54.72.

Senior Courtney Maurin (Pine Bush) was nearby with a sixth-place time of 16:57.51. Freshman Marlee Angus (Penfield) finished ninth (17:19.89), senior Eliza Nichols (Smithtown/Smithtown West) placed 10th (17:21.43) and freshman Kayla Pucci (Goshen) was 11th (17:28.13).

Cortland will compete next Saturday at 11 a.m. at Hamilton College's Short Course Invitational, with the men's race to follow at 11:30 a.m.

Women's Results
Men's Results


Coach's Corner - Comments from Head Coach Steve Patrick

This was a really fun meet to open the season with!  As a program we demonstrated a great deal of maturity and commitment; the leadership of our returning student-athletes was quite helpful as well in terms of getting the team results we wanted out of today!
 
The 2019 season was opened by the Red Dragon Men, who put on a pretty good show.  Despite sitting out a couple of seniors who are returning from injury a 17-point performance, even in a small field like this, is pretty darn enjoyable to be a part of!  While our two seniors up front (Cabel McCandless and Chad Dunham) did a great job, sophomores Clayton Santiago and Mike Verde were pretty exceptional, running nearly 90 seconds faster than they did a year ago to place 3rd and 4th overall is the race!  What might be even a bit more exciting, however, is having five freshmen that ran faster today than those guys did last year – the efforts from Cameron Szabo, Gavin Watkins, Tom Adamescu, Ryan Cory, and Josh Nogaret were something special to watch today.  I'd be pretty remiss if I didn't also mention what a great race senior James Forte had to be our 5th guy, and the 7th overall finisher.
 
The Lady Red Dragons performed incredibly well, with our top five running as a tight pack through the race; all five ladies (by order of finish Sydney Smith, Sam Himes, McKenzie Dombroski, Madison Ciuffetelli, and Courtney Maurin) running faster than our #2 runner did last year at this meet.  They worked incredibly well together to earn the 2nd – 6th spots in the race, for an eventual score of 20 points.  We went into the race hoping to have 'pace groups' working together for most of the race to help us prepare for the bigger races later in the season.  At the halfway point in the race, we had all five of our groups still intact; this is a pretty rare occurrence in distance running to have folks be that focused and performing!  The other example of how exceptional the women's team was today is that all 20 of our ladies ran either even splits today, or ran negative splits.  The course at Fredonia is a 2000-meter loop that the ladies run twice; all of our women either ran the same time for both loops, or ran faster on the second loop.  That was one of the main goals we had for the team today, and to have a 100% success rate is just great!
 
We're looking forward to a good week of training, and the short trip to Hamilton College next week for another short-course race.