Cross Country Earns Mixed Results

The Cornell women are establishing a trend in letting young legs carry the team to success. This past Saturday, at the Iona Meet of Champions, two Red freshmen finished among the top 10 runners in a field of over 200. Cornell claimed second place in the 20 team field.
After winning her first ever collegiate meet, freshman Kim Standridge once again led the way for the Red. Discounting independent runners, Standridge finished fifth overall by running the 6k event in 22:15.9. She had the fastest time of any freshman in the field.
“I think Kim is a great girl,” said classmate Katie Sullivan. “She’s so fast, she’s incredibly talented and she works very hard. It’s so exciting that she’s doing so well.”
Sullivan also had an impressive performance. She finished 10th overall and third among freshmen.
“I was pretty surprised,” she said. “I really didn’t have a lot of expectations going into the race because it was my first 6k ever.”
Cornell also received a strong performance from junior Marie Parks, who finished eighth overall. Rounding out the scoring for the Red were sophomore
Stephanie Pancoast and junior Katie Roll, who finished 13th and 20th, respectively.
While high humidity made the race more difficult for Cornell, in placing five runners among the top-20 the team showed that it has a strong core of runners this season.
“It was really humid so it made it a little bit more difficult,” Sullivan said. “Weather is out of your control. You just have to have faith in your ability. It was really exciting to be able to go out there and compete against the top teams and showcase some of our talent.”
The men’s team elected to rest seven of it’s top runners in preparation for the upcoming Notre Dame Invitational.
As a result, a group of young, inexperienced runners were forced to carry the team. Sophomore Kyle Wolpert led the way, finishing 27th overall with a time of 26:09.7 on the 8k course. Junior Andy Miller finished less than six seconds later to earn 31st place. Sophomore Dale Taylor earned 37th place. Two freshmen rounded out the scoring for Cornell as Max Kasak and Drew Hart placed 39th and 42nd overall, respectively.
“We had a couple good performances from some freshman, specifically Max and Drew,” Taylor said.
Cornell’s team total of 176 was good for sixth place among the 19 competing schools.
“We did pretty well as a team even though we didn’t have our top seven,” Taylor said.
Taylor also noted that it was good for some members of the team to get experience as scoring members, with the team’s regulars resting.
“It definitely helped people. A lot of this is what our team is going to look like in two years,” he said.