OCIAA Champs: Cuffe crushes course record at Bear Mountain; M-W repeats

By Christopher Hunt
photo by Robin White

BEAR MOUNTAIN – Here’s a sign that Aisling Cuffe is in the best shape of her life: She says she feels lazy.

“I feel like I’m not working as hard but I’m still running faster,” she said.

So imagine what the Cornwall senior looked like in the last half-mile of the OCIAA Championships, knowing the she had a chance – her last chance -- at a course record at Bear Mountain. Cuffe crushed the course record in 16:27.56, smiling across the finish line and topping Warwick Valley’s Aislinn Ryan’s mark of 16:35.4 set in 2004. Last year, Cuffe missed the record by eight seconds at the same meet.

Cuffe, the country’s top recruit drawing interest from Villanova, Stanford, Oregon, Georgetown and Duke, knew it would be her last attempt at the record on the 3-mile course...