Both individually, and with its relay teams, Baldwinsville’s indoor track and field teams would make significant impacts during Wednesday night’s Section III Class AA championship meet at SRC Arena.
On the girls side, the Bees made its way to third place, earning 72.5 points, not far from runner-up Liverpool (80 points) as Fayetteville-Manlius, with 114.33 points, repeated as sectional champions.
Nearly a third of those points (24) came from a 1-2-3 sweep in the 300-meter dash. Cierra Allen was victorious in 43.35 seconds, just ahead of Sarah Klaben (45.51 seconds) in the second spot as Angelica Tomasello, in 43.79 seconds, earned third place.
B’ville would also emerge with a victory in the 4×400 relay. The quartet of Allen, Klaben, Tomasello and Marisa Lathrop covered the mile in four minute, 5.73 seconds, beating F-M (4:08.68) by 2.95 seconds for that top spot.
Meanwhile, in the 4×800 relay B’ville saw Lathrop, Mia Bolton, Kelley Hull and Meghan Hull get to second place in 10:08.03, trailing only F-M’s time of 9:41.38.
Tomasello, Klaben, Allen and Elise Seifritz neeed 1:51.02 to get second place behind Liverpool (1:49.08) in the 4×200 relay, meaning the Bees earned 26 points from relay events.
Emily Soeder contended in the high jump and cleared 5 feet 1 inch, settling for second place, one inch behind Rome Free Academy’s Dana Husband (5’2”), as Soeder also took eighth in the triple jump.
Mackenzie Ross earned third place in the 600-meter run in 1:40.63, with Katie Wicks (1:45.14) fifth. Stephanie Vasteno cleared 7’6” for fourth place in the pole vault and made her way to fifth place in the 55-meter dash in 7.68 seconds. Hannah Wood was ninth in the 55-meter hurdles.
In the boys Class sectional AA meet, B’ville picked up 44.33 points, sliding into fourth place as F-M (110 points) won here, too, while RFA and Cicero-North Syracuse took second and third, respectively.
As with the girls, the boys Bees won the 4×400, seeing Nate Wicks, Andy Fleming, Dan Walker and Jeff Mahar put up a time of 3:30.67, easily enough to turn back C-NS (3:35.33) and the rest of the field. Wicks and Mahar were fifth and sixth, respectively, in the 300 sprint.
B’ville also prevailed in the 4×800, where Fleming joined Alec Peinkofer, Josh Perez and Jack Martin and the Bees, in 8:14.60, topped runner-up F-M (8:22.30) by 7.70 seconds.
Logan Maar, clearing 11 feet in the pole vault, took second place to Liverpool’s Travis Chewning-Kulick (12’6”). On his own, Peinkofer ran 1,000 meters in 2:32.13 to claim third place, while Fleming was fourth (1:28.36) in the 600-meter run. Perez got to sixth place in the mile in 4:45.05 as Harrison Warner tied for sixth in the high jump.
After all this, B’ville gets to return to SRC Arena on Wednesday for the Section III state qualifier, which helps determine who gets to go to the March 2 state meet at Cornell University.
