Gaining momentum: Knights compete at Yellowjacket Invitational
Photo Courtesy of Geneseo Knights
The Geneseo Cross Country teams dominated at the Yellowjacket XC Invitational, sweeping the team titles for both the men and women behind a spectacular individual victory in the men's race and a wave of new personal records.
The Geneseo Cross Country Men’s and Women’s teams toed the line this past Saturday at the Yellowjacket XC Invitational in Rochester, their second competition of the season. The Knights dominated the meet for the second year in a row against tough competition, not only winning as a team for both men and women, but also having an individual win in the men’s race, too. Let’s dive into each race to see who made these victories possible!
The men secured their win over Colgate in a close score of 24-35. It’s important to remember that the goal of a cross-country race is for your team to finish with the lowest possible score. Each runner’s placement in a race corresponds to the number of points they add to their score, with first place only adding one, and so on.
Geneseo’s Colin Brown took that coveted number-one spot, crossing the finish line in 25:14.3, a 6.5-second improvement over his fourth-place finish at last year’s competition. Following behind him was James Tette for second place, in a new personal record (PR) of 25:16.0, and Thomas Blake for third place in 25:16.8. Rounding out the Knights scorers was Jake Gaudette for sixth place in 25:34.5, his first-ever collegiate 8k, and Mike Taranto for 12th in 25:46.8, with Daniel McPherson and Ethan Becker coming in as displacers in 13th and 19th, running 25:49.0 and 25:58.4, respectively.
This year’s spread, which takes the top scorer’s time from a team and subtracts it from the fifth-place scorer’s time, was 32.5 seconds, a big improvement from last year’s 45.7 seconds. This signifies that the men have more depth and are finding better fitness than at this point in 2025. This year’s squad also put together an average finishing time of 25:25.7, which is 20.4 seconds faster than 2025.
On the women’s side, the Knights pulled through with a similarly close score against Colgate, winning 34-45. Geneseo’s Greylynn Guyer finished second overall behind Kathryn Arbegast of RIT, with a time of 22:00.8, a new PR. This was a massive improvement for Guyer over last year’s performance, where she placed 24th in 23:16.5. Following close behind were Shelby Boise for fifth in 22:18.1 (PR) and Alexa Kosier for seventh in 22:28.0 (PR), with Annabelle Czekanski and Dakota Limbert placing 12th and 16th overall, in times of 22:50.8 (PR) and 22:58.5 (PR), respectively. Rounding out the Geneseo team as displacers were Danielle List for 18th in 23:08.3 (PR), her collegiate 6k debut, and Ella Grinnell for 20th in 23:11.4 (PR).
Surprisingly, this year’s spread of 57.7 seconds is higher than 2025’s 48.8, even though their average time this year was faster, 22:31.3 versus 22:36.6 last year. This demonstrates that one metric of a race is often not enough to understand the performance overall—cross country is far from a one-dimensional sport!
Next week, the Knights are splitting off to two different meets: the RPI Fairground Showdown at the Washington County Fairground, and the Harry F. Anderson Invitational at Roberts Wesleyan University in Rochester. Let’s see what kind of performances they can drop, and as always—SUNY G BELIEVE!