In their only home meet of the season on Friday, in front of a parent’s weekend crowd, men’s cross-country raced in the 32nd annual John Reif Memorial meet. The 5k race included 47 different runners from Cornell, Syracuse, Niagara, and Cortland.
Although Cornell’s top twelve runners did not race in order to rest for next weekend’s Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, they joined the enthusiastic crowd of parents and the men’s and women’s track teams on the sideline to support their teammates.
Despite there being no overall team score for the race, the Red finished behind upstate-rival Syracuse, and well ahead of opponents Niagara and Cortland.
In his last race as a Big Red runner, senior Brandon Phillips finished first for Cornell in 16:20 and took ninth place in the race. Finishing just behind Phillips was sophomore Mars Bishop in tenth place with a time of 16:27. Junior Freddie Buckholtz finished just seven seconds behind Bishop in 16:34 which landed him in 12th place on the meet, behind senior captain Roc Johnson.
“Individually, for the people who ran the race, it was a good resolution to the season,” senior captain Roc Johnson said. “The race is a tradition that we do at the end of the year.”
Cornell’s Moakley Course is on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course right next to campus. Despite Friday’s slightly cool but sunny weather, the course was muddy which caused some difficulty for multiple runners.
“Times were slow because the course was muddy,” Johnson contended.
The Red have had a successful year so far placing first out of six and second out of 44 in the UB Stampede Invite and the Lehigh Paul Short Run, respectively.
The Red will run next in the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships next weekend in Princeton, New Jersey. “Heps” will mark the beginning of the post-season, the most important time of the year for Big Red cross-country.