Kyra Pellegrino crossed the finish line at the RPI Invitational on Sept. 26, completely unaware or unintrigued by what she had just accomplished, but instead more interested in where her teammates were going to finish.

“Okay, where are my other teammates? We need to place well.’ If we place well, we can get a good rank and hopefully progress toward getting to nationals,” Pellegrino said.

After a few of her teammates crossed the finish line, Pellegrino was finally told that she had just shattered the Oswego State individual record time of 21:30.04 for the women’s 6K race, to which she reacted nonchalantly.

“I think it was my dad. He was on his phone and was like, ‘Okay, I think you got it.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, cool,’” Pellegrino said. “So I didn’t really care. It was kind of just like, ‘By the way, you got the school record.’ I was like, ‘Oh, fun. Didn’t know that one.”

Pellegrino’s record-breaking day on the course was part of an overall great race for the Lakers, who finished fourth out of 16 teams. Pellegrino finished sixth, while junior Elena Gaffney placed ninth with a time of 21:41.6 to round out the top 10 of a race that had 168 runners.

Following the race, U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association released their rankings, placing the Lakers third in the Niagara region, leapfrogging Hamilton college due to a head-to-head win against the Continentals this past weekend.

The early-season rise in the rankings comes after a solid season for the Lakers last year and an undoubtedly weak schedule to start the season. However, Pellegrino says the biggest difference this season has been the depth of the team’s top five.

“Five people make up a team, and last year we had our top three, who were really good. We needed our fourth and fifth runners,” Pellegrino said. “Now that we have a fourth and fifth, I feel like it’s all about teamwork. Last year, it used to be pretty much individual, but now we have our fourth and fifth girls, so if we all work together, maybe we can do it as a team.”

That top five depth was showcased at RPI, with seniors Hannah Reichard and Gia Engel, along with junior Jessica Torrey, rounding out Oswego’s top five, finishing just a minute behind Pellegrino and Gaffney.

Beyond the roster, Pellegrino pointed to a shift in how the women’s team approaches its practices and goals compared to last season.

“From what I see, I feel like last year we would practice with the guys a lot more. Now this year, it’s kind of women practice, men practice,” Pellegrino said. “We’re just trying to focus on our own individual goals as a women’s team, and the men have their individual goals as their team.”

But Pellegrino attributes a lot of the team’s success thus far to an even larger factor: team bonding and chemistry.

“They just make practice so fun. We had a workout today, and I wasn’t feeling the greatest. I was like, ‘Oh guys, this is tough,’” Pellegrino said. “But during our reps, when we were training together, we were all talking to one another and making sure everyone was okay. We’re all on the same page, which is so nice because doing it alone, I could never do that alone.”

With the Lakers rising up the regional rankings with more of a well-rounded core of runners through the first handful of weeks of the season, the team now heads into a very challenging stretch of their schedule. 

It all starts on Oct. 2, when the Lakers take the trip to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to compete in the upper-level white race at the Paul Short Invitational, where Oswego will face some of the best teams and runners in the country.