One of the very best runners in William Smith history, Amy Young Cutler ’03 was the first Heron cross country runner to earn All-American honors. The three-time winner of the Sharon Peckham Best ’62 Most Valuable Cross Country Award twice qualified for the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championship.
As a first-year, Young Cutler made her collegiate debut at the Buffalo State Invitational, finishing 19th, added a second top-20 finish a week later at Oswego and then, just a mere three weeks into her collegiate career, she posted her first career victory. Young Cutler covered the hilly HWS Invitational course in 20:01, 11 seconds ahead of the runner-up. The victory earned her her first Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association Runner of the Week Award. Young Cutler ran her first sub-20-minute 5K at the 1999 UCAA Championships, finishing ninth in 19 minutes flat. She also placed in the top 10 at the Rochester Invitational (9th) and the RPI Invitational (6th). Her race in Troy earned her the UCAA Rookie of the Week Award. Young Cutler won the Heron Invitational with a Seneca Lake State Park course record time of 19:19. At the ECAC Championships, she placed third out of 243 runners, leading the team to an eighth place finish. She closed out her rookie campaign finishing 21st out of 189 runners in the NCAA Atlantic Regional Championship.
As a sophomore, she won five races and finished fourth at the NCAA Division III Atlantic Regional Championships to become the first Heron to qualify for the national championship race. Entering the 2000 season, no Heron had ever run a sub-19-minute 5K. By the end of the season, Young had accomplished the feat 10 times in 11 races. She gave a glimpse of the success to come in the season-opening race at Brockport, breaking the 19-minute mark for the first time, winning in 18:52. Young Cutler set the campus course record, winning the 2000 HWS Invitational in 18:26, lowering the standard by 34 seconds. She turned in one of the most dominant performances in the William Smith Invitational, finishing 92 seconds ahead of the field. Young Cutler’s regional 5k time of 18:07 was a personal and William Smith record. A week later, Young Cutler ran to All-America honors with a 33rd place finish at nationals, posting a time of 18:40.4.
In Young Cutler’s final year of competition, she won six of the 11 races she entered and again qualified for nationals. In 2001, her victories included a third straight HWS Invitational title, a third straight William Smith Invitational triumph and a victory at regional power St. Lawrence, taking the Ronald C. Hoffmann crown. She recorded the fastest 5K time of her career at the RPI Invitational, stopping the clock at 18:04.
Young Cutler earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2003. Following graduation, she continued to compete in races up to the half marathon distance as well as Ironman triathlons. Young Cutler shared her love of running, serving as an assistant cross country coach at SUNY Potsdam for a decade.
