Sports briefly: Golf, cross country

Highlighting the importance of team effort, Columbia men’s cross country team finished third behind No. 4 Oklahoma and No. 22 Georgetown at the 8K Men’s Gold race of the 2011 Paul Short Run Presented by Brooks. Columbia’s top five finishers all placed in the top 50, with only a 17-second spread among them. Junior Leighton Spencer led the team with a 24:49 finish, good for 24th place. The next race for the Columbia men’s cross country team will be the Metropolitan Championships in Van Cortlandt Park on Friday.
—Eric Wong

The men’s golf team finished the Macdonald Cup hosted by the reigning Ivy League champions, Yale, in eighth place, while the women’s golf team finished its participation in the Nittany Lion Invitational, hosted by Penn State, in 12th place. Yale consolidated the victory on its home turf, despite having one less round due to a rain cancellation. Ivy League rivals Princeton, Dartmouth, and Harvard finished above the Lions in second, third, and fifth, respectively. The standout individual golfer for the men’s team was senior Brendan Doyle, who was in second place after the first round of play with a score of three-under par but dropped and tied for fourth overall by finishing with an even score of 140. For the women, sophomore Michelle Piyapattra had just enough for a top-20 finish. The women’s tournament also had a rain cancellation. Both teams return to competitive action in two weeks.
—Edgar Flores