Women’s cross country finishes 7th out of 36 at Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational

Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.

Syracuse women’s cross country finished seventh out of 36 teams at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational hosted by the University of Wisconsin. The men’s team finished 20th out of 31 teams and ranked No. 15 overall.

Senior Amanda Vestri led the way for the Orange crossing ninth overall at 20:13.3. Next came sophomore Savannah Roark, 43 spots and almost a minute later at 52 (20:55.7), followed by a wave of scorers including Holly Bent at 54 (20:56.8), Annie Boos at 74 (21:08.5) and Abigail Spiers at 78 (21:10.1). Sophia Jacobs-Townsley finished 132nd, (21:30.6), and Sydney Nowicki ,who finished 165th (21:45.9), placed for competition as well.

Unranked Syracuse beat out No. 7 Washington, No. 9 Stanford, No. 17 Michigan State, No. 18 Portland, No. 19 Providence, No. 20 Villanova, No. 22 Iowa State, No. 23 Notre Dame, No. 26 UConn, No. 28 Furman and No. 30 Oregon State en route to its top-10 finish.

The men entered the meet ranked No. 27, but didn’t fare quite as well as the women. Still, they finished 20th in a field loaded with 15 ranked squads.

Joe Dragon was the Orange men’s top finisher crossing at 23:39.6 to claim 15th overall. Aidan Tooker finished at 52nd (24:04.5), followed by graduate JP Trojan at 87th (24:25.4), redshirt sophomore Noah Beveridge at 161st (25:04.0), redshirt sophomore Silas Derfel at 174th (25:08.8), and rounding out the scoring was senior Brody Smith at 187th (25:26.4).

The men outscored only two of the other ranked teams: No. 16 Butler and No. 14 Iona.

Meanwhile, a second group of Syracuse runners raced at the Penn State National Open, where SU women ranked No. 9 out of 16 squads, and SU men ranked No. 7 out of 10.

Justus Holden-Betts led the way for Syracuse’s women’s team coming in at 8th with a time of 21:34.0, followed closely by Reilly Zink at 24th (21:46.1), then Eleanor Lawler at 45th (22:25.9), redshirt freshman Emily Nugent at 89th (23:04.1) and freshman Olivia Joly at 124th (23:49.6).

The SU men were led by Ethan Wechsler, who finished 15th with a time of 26:06.4, followed by Joey Eovaldi at 29th (26:28.5), Nathan Lawler at 44th (26:59.6), Kevin Robertson at 47th (27:06.9) and rounded out by Jack Whetstone at 57th (27:20.0).

The Orange will be back in action on Friday at the John Reif Memorial hosted by Cornell.