CICERO – Track and field stars from Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse did not have to travel anywhere for this weekend’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship meet – and wanted to celebrate that fact with medals.
In the state meet at Bragman Stadium, two days of frenzied activity, which started and stopped twice on Friday due to weather, concluded Saturday with a record performance by the girls Warriors’ 4×100 relay team in the Federation finals.
Between them, the Liverpool quartet of Nahla Battle-Crenshaw, Maddie Devendorf, Mikayla Greene and Mia Wright went 47.99 seconds to set a new Section III record and finish third while their rivals from C-NS could not finish the race. South Shore won the race in 47.60.
Before their Federation battle, in the Division I (large school) final of the girls 4×100 C-NS had Hayes, Mackey, Grace Murray and eighth-grader Stephanie Todd finish fourth in 48.43 seconds, while the Warriors were seventh in 48.53, something upon which they would improve a day later.
Northstars freshman Anna Eells was in three girls events and would take the bronze medal in the high jump, clearing 5 feet 7 inches as her Section III teammate, East Syracuse Minoa’s Akuot Kuany, won as the only competitor to top 5’8”.
Having gone 40’ 1/4” in the triple jump where she was the no. 4 seed, Eells went 38’4 1/2” here but still went to the podium in seventh place. She also had a time of 15.07 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles that just missed advancing to the finals and put her 11th overall.
In the long jump, Eells settled for 13th place with 16’11 1/2”, while in the 100 hurdles Morgan Hayes was 18th in 15.40 seconds and Jaydin Mackey 20th in 15.46.
Mackey also ran in the 100-meter dash (12.30), joined by Greene (12.38) and Devendorf (12.48), and it was Greene doing best in the 100, her 12.66 good for 18th place ahead of Mackey’s 12.70 and Devendorf’s 12.75, while in the 200 Greene’s 25.72 got her into the final where she ultimately took seventh place in 26.03.
Murray eeded 12th in the 400 hurdles (1:03.84), moved up into medal position, seventh in 1:03.41 and not far from the winning 1:01.48 of Columbia’s Ava Weiss as teammate Aalilyah McDonald was 18th in 1:08.13.
Taylor Page led Liverpool in the 1,500-meter run, posting a season-best time of 4:42.92 for 13th place in Division I. Page also was in the 4×800 relay with teammates Addison Ziegler, Katilyn Hotaling and Charlotte Warner, where they finished 10th in Division I with a clocking of 9:37.92.
On the boys side for C-NS, Joe Main looked for medals in the shot put and discus. As the fifth seed in the shot put with a season-best throw of 53’6”, he went 53’8 1/4” here and moved up to fourth place,
though well off the winning 64’5 3/4” from Penfield’s Peter Northrup, and added a seventh in the Federation shot put with 49’10 3/4”.
Dante Melfi was part of the 800-meter run, where he had gone 1:56.66 this season and nearly equaled it, his 1:57.40 putting him eighth among Division I runners and 14th overall.
