The final results from last year’s Cornell Upstate Challenge tell the entire story for the Syracuse track and field team.

On the women’s side, Syracuse earned 88 points, good for third place behind Cornell (214) and Buffalo (150). On the men’s side, the team accumulated 97 points, again finishing third behind Cornell (246) and Buffalo (109). While there were personal victories for various Orange athletes, the day was characterized by Cornell’s dominance and Buffalo’s steady performance, two programs Syracuse frequently runs against.

These results hardly bothered Syracuse at the time, and bother it even less now. The team will travel to the annual Upstate Challenge in Ithaca, N.Y., this Saturday, and runners and coaches alike are seeing the meet as an early season tune-up — and not much else.

“This is really just a feeler out, almost like a preseason meet,” said SU head coach Chris Fox. “This isn’t a fast track so we’re not going to worry about speed. We’ll just give some young people the chance to get some experience before we go to Penn State.”

Next weekend, the team will travel to University Park, Pa., for the Penn State National Open. Even with the Upstate Challenge in the schedule before then, runners have started to prepare for the Penn State National Open, and are looking at this weekend’s meet as an extension of their weekly practice schedule.

“You never want to look past a race,” said sophomore distance runner Andrew Bennison. “But this meet is very low-key, probably the most low-key of our indoor season.

As a freshman last season, Bennison’s first indoor race of his collegiate career was at the Upstate Challenge, and while he does think of the meet fondly, he has no concrete goals going into it this time around.

Graduate student Lauren Penney finished first in the women’s mile last weekend at the Gotham Cup. This weekend, she will rest her legs for Penn State like many of her older teammates, but she’s excited to see what the rest of the team can accomplish.

“Team placing is not so much important in track, but I think some individuals can have some really good races this weekend.” Penney said. “We have a lot of runners who could do really well and it will be exciting to see them in their first races.”

Published on January 17, 2013 at 12:41 am

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse