The women’s cross country team placed tenth in their season opener on Sept. 17 in the Meet of Champions at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx.
After having their original season opener at Bethpage State Park canceled due to damage done by Hurricane Irene, St. John’s senior Nicole Cocozza started her season strongly, placing thirteenth while running her personal best time at 23:02.69.
“We did well, but we can definitely do better,” said head coach Jim Hurt. “Our goal is to have all of our runners finish within 30 seconds of our top runner, and we ended up having a little over a 2 minute differential”
Noting that room for improvement, he also recognized that this was not how they would normally start their season. “In terms of level of difficulty, the Van Cortlandt Park course is probably the hardest course we’ll race on all year, and we usually start off our season with a 5k instead of 6k run,” he said.
The meet, which was hosted by Iona, had 18 teams, eight of which were regionally ranked, and a total of 202 competitors.
The Red Storm were competitive despite being without two runners. Junior transfer Marisela Acevedo has to sit out this season under NCAA rules, and Stephanie Barnes was out with a concussion suffered in a car accident.
Cocozza led the way for the Storm and senior Samantha Meyerhoff followed closely placing 26th (26 seconds behind Cocozza). Sophomore Chelsea Trant and junior Alexis Bean finished shortly after in 49th and 61st place, respectively.
Sophomore Michelle Duffy, senior Aryon Trujillo and sophomore Angela Jarvela also finished in the top 100 to help secure a tenth place finish for the Red Storm.
St. John’s continues their season next week at the Leeber Invitational at Fairfield University in Connecticut.
