Guilderland’s Brian Rhodes-Devey bounced back from an eighth-place performance at the state meet by finishing second at Saturday’s Federation Cross Country Championships at Bowdoin State Park in Wappingers Falls.
I definitely felt better about that, said Rhodes-Devey. `I was disappointed with my state meet performance, and I knew I had to have a better performance at the Federation meet.`
Rhodes-Devey stayed with race leader Tommy Gruenewald of Fayetteville-Manlius through the first half of the race. Gruenewald pulled away at the midway point, but Rhodes-Devey rallied to finish 5.4 seconds behind him with a time of 15:45.5.
`Going into the race, I didn’t have a solid strategy of what I was going to do,` said Rhodes-Devey. `Once the race started to unfold about a half-mile in, I knew I had to set the pace with Tommy (Gruenewald).`
Rhodes-Devey’s second-place finish helped Guilderland take 12th place in the team competition at the Federation meet. The Dutchmen finished with 308 points.
Roland Graves contributed a 44th-place finish with a time of 16:52.8 for Guilderland, which finished eighth at last year’s Federation meet.“