The Shippensburg University women's cross country team skillfully navigated through unseasonably warm conditions at Saturday's Paul Short Invitational and put forth a balanced, fleet-of-foot performance that resulted in a second-place finish out of 45 teams in the Brown race.

Despite entering as the Atlantic Region's No. 4 seed and competing without one of its regular runners, SU finished six places and 176 points ahead of the next closest PSAC school (Mansfield) in the 6K race. Cal, the region's No. 3 seed, finished ninth. Kutztown (20th), Bloomsburg (21st), West Chester (24th), Millersville (27th), Lock Haven (38th) and Clarion (42nd) were also in Saturday's Brown race.

SU maintained a strong pack and had all six of its runners finish within 71 seconds of each other – one of the tighter margins in the field. Despite being the middle of the three women's races contested on Saturday, the Raiders still ran amidst a host of talented schools from Divisions I-III and bested the likes of Haverford, Dickinson, UMBC, Monmouth, Towson and Piper Alumni Meet Champion Elizabethtown.

Two freshmen led the way for Shippensburg. Casey Norton continued her impressive rookie campaign with a 12th-place finish out a 365-person field. Her time of 22:09 is a 58-second improvement from her previous 6K at Dickinson on Sept. 14 and ranked fourth-fastest among Division II competitors.

Fellow freshman Allison Marella crossed the finish line in 24th place – posting a time of 22:26. That time is an improvement of 65 seconds from her training run at Dickinson and continues her streak of placing among SU's Top 4 runners in a race.
 
Redshirt-junior Patty Reis is continuing to round into the form she displayed as a postseason runner for Shippensburg in 2010 and 2011. Reis finished 37th on Saturday with a brisk course run of 22:45, marking a season improvement of 47 seconds at 6K.

Junior Caitlin Perry took advantage of the fast course to post one of the stronger 6K runs of her career, finishing 42nd overall in 22:49. She finished within 20 seconds of her 2012 season-ending times that ranked among SU's Top 6 postseason scoring runners.

Senior Heather Weiss and sophomore Jessica Collins finished within one second of another to round out the Raider field in the Brown race. Weiss finished 70th in 23:19 while Collins was one place behind.

Earlier in the day, six runners represented the Raiders in the women's open race. Senior Stephanie Pryor was the fastest of the SU runners in that race, completing 6K in 23:39. Junior April Schlusser posted a time of 24:12.

Shippensburg's next competition will be in two weeks at Gettysburg. It will be the final tune-up for the Raiders in advance of the PSAC Championships, scheduled for October 26 at Kutztown.

Note: IUP, the Atlantic Region's No. 1 seed, was the PSAC's lone school that competed in the Gold race. Running in a fast Division I field, two Crimson Hawks posted times faster than any Raider runner, but Reis as SU's No. 3 runner finished within one second of IUP's No. 3 runner and Perry as SU's No. 4 runner finished four seconds ahead of her Crimson Hawk counterpart. Perhaps most importantly, all seven of SU's runners in the Brown race finished ahead of IUP's No. 5 scoring runner in the Gold race.

Brown 6K

12. Casey Norton 22:09
24. Allison Marella 22:26
37. Patty Reis 22:45
42. Caitlin Perry 22:49
70. Heather Weiss 23:19
71. Jessica Collins 23:20

Open 6K

120. Stephanie Pryor 23:39
176. April Schlusser 24:12
212. Erika Huffman 24:34
297. Laura Antinucci 25:44
334. Abbey Farrell 26:18
364. Allison Constant 26:40