Nov. 24, 2008
QUEENS, N.Y. - St. John's senior Tyneka Greene led the Red Storm cross country team to a 10th-place finish at Saturday's ECAC Cross Country Championships. Greene finished 20th at the team's final event of the season, earning All-ECAC/East honors for the second-straight season. The senior is the first St. John's cross country athlete to earn the accolade twice. Greene crossed the tape at 19:17, .01 seconds off her 19th-place 2007 ECAC Championship time. St. John's finished with 263 points and an average time of 19:50.20 in the 24-team 5K race held at Van Cortlandt Park. Last season, the Red Storm finished 15th with 389 points, making a substantial 126-point improvement over last year, without the help of one of its top runners, freshman Sabine Schneider, who was sidelined with an injury. Columbia won the event with 107 points. Sacred Heart and Army finished second and third, with 118 and 120 points, respectively. Freshman Nicole Cocozza finished her season with her second-fastest time in the 5K and her best time at Van Cortlandt Park with a 33rd-place finish of 19:31. Greene and Cocozza have four of the five top 5K times of the season with two each. Cocozza's classmate Aryon Trujillo finished 66th earning 63 points for St. John's with a time of 19:59. Sophomore Sarah Sudbury and junior Pamela Petruski also scored for the Red Storm with a combined 148 points. Sudbury placed 76th with a time of 20:10, her second-fastest this season. Petruski finished 83rd and crossed the tape with a career-best 5K time of 20:14. Sophomore Lori Dougherty, junior Sarah Fry, senior Rakibat Abiola and sophomores Kayla Regulski and Katrina Schaefer also competed in the race. Dougherty finished 117th with a time of 20:33, also setting a career-best time. Fry and Abiola finished back-to-back with times of 21:00 and 21:01. Regulski finished 151st with a time of 21:02, while Schaefer finished 204th, crossing the tape at 22:22.
The ECAC Championships concluded the season for the Red Storm who improved greatly from last season with the addition of its fine freshman class. The team won two races, the Hofstra Invitational (Sept. 6) and the STJ Fall Festival (Oct. 19) and was runner-up at the Fairfield Leeber Invitational (Sept. 26). St. John's improved 10 places from last season at this year's National Catholic Championships after making just its second appearance at the event since 2004. At the Metropolitan Championships, the team improved four places to finish fourth in the 14-team race, just missing third place by 13 points. At the NCAA Northeast Regionals, the Red Storm shaved 214 points off its score, finishing 26th in the 34-team event.
2008 ECAC 5K Results |
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