After dominating some smaller early season meets, the women’s cross-country team competed in the 34th annual Paul Short Run at Lehigh last weekend, featuring numerous regionally and nationally-ranked teams. The Raiders finished an impressive 19th out of 47 teams, only three points behind Patriot League rival Bucknell and 26 points behind a very good Navy team. 317 runners ran in the Championship 6K race, making pack running extremely difficult and pushing and shoving frequent occurrences.

“They were trying to focus on each other and just run their own race,” Head Coach Laura Nardelli said. “Right from the gun it was very tight and there was a lot of pushing.”

This wasn’t enough to throw off Colgate’s runners however, especially first-year Stacey Marion. She led the Raiders for the fourth consecutive time, finishing 42nd overall with a time of 21:39. Marion’s performance was a record for a Colgate runner at the Paul Short Invitational. She also led all Patriot League runners. Senior Elizabeth Kennedy followed up last meet’s performance with another solid showing, finishing the 6K race in 22:06, good enough for 69th place overall. Sophomore Emily Oliver perhaps turned in the most surprising effort of the day, lowering her personal-best time by two minutes and 10 seconds, finishing 126th with a time of 22:51. Right behind Oliver was senior Kathryn Marvel, who finished fourth for Colgate with a time of 22:56. Rounding out the scoring for the Raiders was junior Jessica Kielty, who ran a personal best time of 23:23.

Making Colgate’s performance at the Paul Short Run even sweeter was the news of the team’s first regional ranking in program history, as the Raiders are currently ranked 15th in the Northeast Region by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Colgate ensured its ranking by beating two regionally-ranked teams at the Paul Short Run and finishing just three points behind Bucknell, who is ranked 10th in the Mid-Atlantic region.

“We had a couple of surprises this weekend,” Nardelli said. “I knew we were ready to run like we did, but I was a little surprised we came so close to beating a team like Bucknell. I also think we have a lot left in the tank.”

The Raiders will take a week off before returning into action at the Albany Invitational on October 13th.