The way it worked for Jamesville-DeWitt’s girls indoor track and field team was that it was second the first time around in the 2011-12 season, and first the second time around.
Or, to put it another way, the Red Rams emerged victorious from Wednesday night’s John Arcaro Memorial Invitational at Onondaga Community College’s SRC Arena.
A week after finishing runner-up to Cicero-North Syracuse in the season-opening Jack Morse Relays, the Red Rams took advantage of the different format in the Arcaro meet and, with 63.7 points, beat the Northstars (45 points) and the rest of the 22-team field. Fayetteville-Manilus was fifth with 29 points.
J-D dominated the field events, winning three of them and gaining 44 points overall. Sierra Vasiliou claimed victory in the long jump, going 15 feet 11 inches, eight inches ahead of West Genesee’s Emily Frazee, and also was second in the shot put, tossing it 32 feet 2 inches.
Margaret Fuller set the tone when she cleared 5 feet 4 inches and won the high jump by two inches over the rest of the field. Danielle Doss took the pole vault when she cleared 8 feet 6 inches with fewer misses than Sknaeateles’ Kaela Fiutak.
Even when J-D’s Patrece Martin settled for third place in the triple jump (31 feet 3 1/4 inches) the title stayed in local hands as East Syracuse-Minoa’s Amanda Wall went 32 feet 10 inches to win that event for the second week in a row.
Moving to the races, F-M’s quartet of Natalie Zazzara, Jessica Howe, Marri Ryu and Mikayla Ruthig took top honors in the 4×400 relay in 4:18.61 as J-D’s quartet of Doss, Katy Pieri, Liz Pieri and Ally Fox finished second in 4:19.58, less than a second behind the Hornets.
The Hornets’ Mary Barger won the 1,500-meter run in 4:58.93, with J-D’s Rachel Fairbanks working her way to third place in 5:03.20. F-M also was fifth in the 4×200 relay as Zazzara took fourth in the 200-meter dash in 27.64 seconds, just ahead of Fox (27.75 seconds) in fifth.
Also for the Hornets, Olivia Ryan was fifth in the 500-meter run (1:26.11), with Liz Pieri sixth. Michelle Duffy gained sixth (3:16.05) in the 1,000-meter run and the Rams’ Noelle Novakowski was sixth in the 55-meter hurdles.
Meanwhile, J-D’s boys team, also second at the Morse Relays, fell to a tie for fifth with Baldwinsville at the Arcaro meet, each finishing with 26 points as Liverpool (53 points) rose to the top spot. F-M, with 18 points, slid into eighth place.
For the Rams, Ryan Peters rose to second in the shot put with a throw of 42 feet 9 inches and Zach Leibman had a second-place pole vault of 11 feet 6 inches.
Will Sterriker was third in the 55 hurdles in 8.22 seconds, with teammate Nate Sturgeon (8.47 seconds) in fifth place. Taumeras Howard took fifth (5 feet 4 inches) in the high jump.
F-M rose to the top in the 4×400 relay, where Langston Lightcap, Austin Perez, Charlie Beeler and Said Shukri posted a time of 3:34.64, more than two seconds ahead of runner-up CNS. Lightcap was third in the 500-meter run in 1:09.69, edging ESM’s Mike Coogan (1:09.91), who finished fourth.
The Hornets’ Zhengyue Zhu had a fifth-place triple jump of 37 feet 9 inches. CBA’s Deshawn Salter got fifth in the 200 in 24.42 seconds, with teammate Brendan Smith sixth in the 1,000.
Following some holiday rest, all the local teams gather again at SRC Arena next Wednesday for the Oscar Jensen Holiday Relays.
