Photo Courtesy of Cameron Garofalo- SUNY Geneseo
The Geneseo Cross Country teams delivered two podium finishes at the 44th Mike Woods Invitational at Letchworth State Park, with the men’s team securing first place led by Emerson Comer, and the women’s team taking a strong third-place finish.
The Geneseo Cross Country (GXC) team competed at their home meet this weekend, the 44th Mike Woods Invitational, running on a course carved through our very own Letchworth State Park. GXC put together two podium placements for the men’s and women’s teams through the wet conditions on Friday afternoon, so let’s dive in and check out their performances!
On the men’s side, senior Emerson Comer won the individual title over Amherst’s Stan Craig in a time of 24:58.7 to Craig’s 25:08.1. Following Emerson to score for the Knights were junior James Tette, placing seventh in 25:21.3; junior Thomas Blake for ninth in 25:22.6; senior Collin Brown for eleventh in 25:28.5; and senior Mike Taranto for twenty-seventh in 25:58.1. Freshman Jake Gaudette and senior Pierce Young finished as displacers in thirty-seventh and forty-seventh place, with times of 26:23.9 and 26:47.8, respectively. Together, the Knights scored 55 points over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s 60 to take first place in the meet.
It is important to remember that cross country meets are not won by the highest score, but the lowest. Each runner’s score for their team correlates with where they finish in the overall race, with first place scoring one point, and so forth. Although they do not score for their team, displacers (the sixth-place and seventh-place runners on a team) can add to other teams’ scores if they beat their scoring athletes, adding a whole new level of intricacy to the XC scoring system. The spread—which is the first-place athlete’s time subtracted from the fifth-place athlete’s time on a team—for GXC was 59.4, with every scorer coming in under 26 minutes on a course with less-than-ideal conditions, and an average time of 25:25.8 seconds.
For the women, sophomore Greylynn Guyer led the Knights squad, placing eighth overall in a time of 22:29.8, with Josephine Dziedzic of New York University taking the individual title. Following behind Guyer were sophomore Annabelle Czekanski for eleventh place in 22:35.8, junior Ari Reback for thirteenth in 22:39.0, senior Shelby Boise for fourteenth in 22:40.4, and sophomore Alexa Kosier for fifteenth in 22:41.0. Junior Ella Grinnell and freshman Camryn Szokoli finished as displacers in twenty-fifth and thirty-first place, with times of 23:00.9 and 23:12.0, respectively. The women’s team finished third overall with 61 points, just behind second-place Carnegie Mellon’s 60 points, with NYU taking a commanding victory with 20 points. The team spread was a very tight 11.2 seconds, the lowest all season, with an average time of 22:37.2.
Coming up next weekend is the Empire 8 Championships in Troy, NY. Geneseo just recently moved conferences from the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) to Empire 8 in 2024, and since then, Geneseo Cross Country as well as track and field have gone two for two in cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track team titles, men and women. Looking even farther ahead, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III XC Nationals will be held in Northfield, MN, and after the men’s second-place finish in Spartanburg, SC last fall, I am excited to see what the championship season has in store for the Knights. Until then—SUNY G BELIEVE!