BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- After the Lehigh Valley was beset by 8 inches of rain in the two days leading up to Friday's Paul Short Run, the Big Red women's cross country teams raced in rainy, wet and very muddy contitions on the normally super-fast Lehigh cross country course. Despite the conditions, the Cornell women produced very good competitive results, placing fourth in the nationally competitive Gold Championship Race.
The Cornell women were out well on the rain-soaked course and competed hard throughout, finishing in fourth with 198 points, behind only #6 Georgetown, #16 Virginia and a strong James Madison team and edging Heps rival Columbia by 7 points and perennial Canadian power Guelph by 9 points. Cornell also placed ahead of Brown (12th), Penn (15th) and Dartmouth (16th). Sophomore
Kelsey Karys led the Cornell contingent for much of the race and in the end it was freshman
Devin McMahon who crossed the line as the first Cornellian, closing very well yet again in the last mile. McMahon dipped under 21:00 for the 6K course, crossing the line in 20:59 for an impressive 19th out of nearly 370 runners, and produced the second best Cornell time ever run on the Lehigh course. Sophomore
Katie Kellner had another good race to place 26th in 21:15 while Karys ran a 6K PR to place 37th in 21:21. Another pair of sophomores,
Genna Hartung (56th, 21:35) and
Cara Costich (60th, 21:39 for another course PR) closed out the scoring for the Big Red.
Although a slew of young runners led the Big Red charge, good Cornell women's teams have always been defined by strong running from upperclassmen and so far this season the 2010 team has been no different: junior
Janel Parker improved one minute and forty-five seconds from last year to set a new PR of 21:47 for 67th and senior
Kristin Sellers ran very well yet again to place 72nd in 21:52, another nice course personal best. Senior captain
Maura Carroll had a solid performance and great effort to place 87th in 22:00 with junior
Shelby Herman close behind in 90th in a course personal best of 22:01. Junior
Christine Smith was 190th in 22:52 in the field of nearly 370 runners.
Earlier in the day, the Big Red placed second in the “Open” race (placing only behind the Guelph “B” team) with seven runners in the top 25. Sophomore
Neesha Schnepf improved over a minute from 2009 as she placed sixth in a fine race, running 22:21. Freshman
Dale Kinney had a very good race as well to place 10th in 22:36 while classmate Emmy Shearer was 13th in 22:42. Sophomore
Kate Rosettie was 15th in 22:44, junior
Meghan Brown was 16th in 22:46 and junior
Emma Clarke was 17th in 22:54. Also running (in a field of 212 runners) for Cornell was freshman
Kaytlin Fischer (25th, 23:07), freshman Julie Horwath (29th, 23:16), freshman
Rachel Sorna (32nd, 23:22) and freshman
Lauren Lapointe (44th, 23:39).
Complete Women's Gold Race results are here:
http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/PaulShort/Results/2010_CW_Gold.html
Complete Women's Open Race results are here:
http://www.paulshortxcrun.com/PaulShort/Results/2010_CW_Open.html
Next up for the Cornell women is the Penn State National Invitational in State College, Pa., on Saturday, October 16th. The team will host the John Reif Memorial Run on Friday, October 22nd and then the Heps return to Van Cortlandt Park on Friday, October 29th.