BRONX, N.Y. --- The Big Red women competed hard on Friday at Van Cortlandt Park to produce a sixth place team finish at the cross country Heps.  Led by two of the team's tri-captains, junior Taylor Spillane and senior Caroline Kellner, Cornell scored 114 points, the same score as fifth place Penn (barely losing out on the tiebreaker), a mere five points from fourth place Brown and only 20 points from third place Columbia.  Taking advantage of picture perfect fall conditions, Princeton won for the first time since 2010 with a score of 60 as they put three in the top six and Yale ran well to place second with 83 points.  
 
Bolstered by their tightest spread of the season over 6K from their first five runners, the Big Red did a fine job battling back in the second half of the race.  For the second straight meet, the Big Red had difficulty establishing good early position, and was in seventh place as a team, and already nearly fifty points out of second, at the half-way point on the 6K layout as the racers crossed into the famous Van Cortlandt Back Hills.  The squad did a fine job of continuing to battle, and raced very well over the final 3000 meters to rally and nearly nab a spot in the top three teams.  
 
Spillane ultimately finished tenth in 21:33.4, with Kellner producing her best race of the season in eleventh in 21:38.0, moving up nicely in the second half of the race.  Freshman Eve Glasergreen, in 47th at halfway, did a tremendous job to pass 23 people in the final two miles of the race to ultimately place 24th in 22:06.0.  Sophomore Jackie Katzman ran well in her cross country Heps debut, placing 34th in 22:18.7.  Senior Claire DeVoe was the third-best fifth runner in the field, placing 35th in 22:20.4 to close out a fine 47 second spread for Cornell's scoring five.  Sophomore Erin McLaughlin improved 35 places from last year to finish 40th in 22:23.9 and classmate Shannon Hugard was 23 places better, crossing the line in 22:47.8 for 58th.  Next up were three freshmen:  Annie Taylor (60th, 22:51.0), Briar Brumley (61st, 22:54.6), and Gracie Todd (70th, 23:07.5).  Senior tri-captain Kristen Niedrach (74th, 23:11.3) and sophomore Kenzie Lemieux (80th, 23:26.6) rounded out Cornell's Heps squad.
 
Complete results can be found here, including links to splits at 3.1K and 5.1K as runners crossed the bridge into, and then out of, the Back Hills.
 
Next up for Cornell cross country is the NCAA Northeast Regional Championships at Boston's Franklin Park on Friday, November 13.  The women will compete at noon and the men at 1 p.m. The NCAA Championships will be in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday, Nov. 21.