LOCK HAVEN — Senior Tyler Kraft and junior Ryan Cottillion had personal best performances to lead the Bradford cross country team at the Bear Mountain Invitational at Lock Haven University on Saturday. Kraft ran the 3.1-mile course in 17:03.5 for to finish 20th while Cottillion posted his best-ever time of 17:34.4 for 30th.
“These two guys have looked good in practice but you don’t really know how they are doing until they are in a real meet,” Bradford coach Tom Tessena said. “The competition was very strong today.”
Dylan Throop of General McLane set a new course record with a time of 15:30.7. Wyalusing Valley took the team honors with 76 points. Bradford placed No. 8 overall with 230 in the 22-team field.
“Our first four guys ran well but the number five man was over a minute behind and that ended up being almost 40 points,” Tessena said.
Juniors Gabe Mitchell and Aiden Wright finished 48th and 49th respectively. Mitchell ran a time of 18:13.7 and Wright an 18:16.9. Wright’s time was a personal best while Mitchell was right at his best mark.
“These two guys got caught in a large group and couldn’t get out when they had to move. This was a learning experience for them,” Tessena said. “They both would have easily been under 18:00 and would have moved up 10 places or so. Within 222 runners and a lot of narrow places on the course it was tough to not get caught up in a bad position.”
Juniors Quentin Minard and Steve Morgan were the fifth and sixth men for the Owls. Minard finished in 19:16.6 for 83rd place while Morgan was 96th in 19:32.7. Zander Koppenhaver was seventh for the Owls with a time of 20:06.3 and a 114th-place finish.
“This was Zander’s first varsity race, and I know he will do even better (in) the next race,” Tessena said. “He has been running in fifth position most of the time. Quentin has been working through some leg issues and Steve missed some time due to dental surgery. These guys also will be much closer to the front guys.”
Ian Paterniti (136th in 20:31), Devin Benson (139th in 20:42.7), and Zach Cole (177th in 22:24.2) rounded out the varsity squad.
“Cross Country teams win or lose based upon the time spread between their first and fifth men. Today the winning team, Wyalusing Valley, had a spread of 1:10 and averaged 16:48 per man. They also had four guys in the top 17,” Tessena said. “Our split was 2:13 with an average time of 18:05. Our top four guys were only 1:13 apart and averaged 17:46. We need someone to move up fast to contend with the better teams.
“All in all it was a pretty good opening day. We get right back at it on Tuesday when we go down to St.Marys to take on the Dutch and the Kane Wolves. St. Marys is a much improved team this year with a pretty good size team. Kane always has tough distance runners so we will have our work cut out for us.”
