When West Genesee’s cross country teams met up with Liverpool and Central Square in a three-way meet last Wednesday afternoon, the boys and girls results were both split – but that just started a tough an exciting stretch of the season.

In the girls case, the Wildcats, even with the top two individuals in the race, lost, 26-29, to the Warriors, though it did easily beat the Red Hawks 15-49.

Carly Benson pulled away from the field and won the race in 19 minutes, 24 seconds, with Grace Craig sliding into second place in 20:05.

But Liverpool, led by Juliana Basla in third place (20:12), grabbed the next four spots in order before WG’s Lindsay Weaver finished seventh in 21:03. And the Warriors’ fifth runner, Kristina Moore, was eighth in 21:23, offering clinching points in front of Elise Dunshee, who finished in 22:24.

As for the boys Wildcats, it lost, 19-42, to state no. 2-ranked Liverpool, while rolling past Central Square 21-40 to also gain a split.

David Leff finished fourth, in 17:17, behind the Warriors’ trio of Ben Petrella (16:54), Connor Buck (16:04) and Nick LeClair (16:10), with Will Randall making it to fifth place in 17:27, the only other top-10 finisher on WG’s behalf.

This led the Wildcats to its appearance in Saturday’s Manhattan Invitational at VanCortlandt Park in the Bronx, where Benson rose all the way to third place in the day’s featured girls race, the Eastern States Championship.

With a time of 14 minutes, 27.9 seconds on VanCortlandt Park’s 4,000-meter course (shorter than the 5,000-meter courses high school cross country runners typically face), Benson was just behind Fayetteville-Manlius senior Annika Avery (14:24.7) and Heritage’s Weini Kelati, who won the race in 14:20.6.

As a team, WG tied for ninth in the 12-team field, with 247 points, as F-M (48 points) rose to the top spot. Behind Benson, Craig took 48th place, in 15:57.5, while Weaver finished 60th in 16:19 flat. Dunshee was 66th, in 16:30.4, ahead of eighth-grader Kendall Dombroske (16:40.1) in 70th, Maria Matkoski (16:44.4) in 72nd and Sara Ferranti (18:05.4) in 87th place.

Meanwhile, in the boys A race, Leff and Randall contended for top honors, as Leff finished third in 12:59.1 and Randall was fifth in 13:00.8, each of them just behind Cornwall’s Aiden Doyle, who won his division in 12:52.8.

Further back, McAnulty made his way to 43rd place, in 13:56.2, with Ryan Dunning in 71st place (14:36.7), four spots ahead of Hunter Buza (14:43.3), with Brendan McMahon (14:52.1) and Kyle Jenkins (14:53.8) right behind them.

Marcellus would sweep its OHSL Freedom division meet against Chittenango and Fulton, edging past the Bears by a one-point margin, 27-28, while sweeping the Red Raiders 15-50.

Behind Chittenango’s 1-2 finish of Sarah Moon (22:05) and Hayley Foran (23:24), Tori Stopen led the Mustangs as she took third place in 23:38. Emily Townsend was just behind in fourth place with a clocking of 24:32.

Just as important was the fact that Marcellus claimed three of the next four spots. Schuyler Stuart gained fifth place in 24:16, with Crystal Silliman getting to seventh place (24:51) and Brianna Szczech eighth in 25:04 to help the Mustangs finish on top.

In the boys meet, Marcellus would claim its own one-point victory, 28-29, over Fulton, while also getting past Chittenango 22-36.

Fresh off his Tully Invitational victory on Oct. 4, Patrick McGuane won here, too, his time of 17:56 beating out Fulton’s Bailey Lutz (18:15) and Chittenango’s Mike Capeling (18:29) for top honors.

Alex Stopen made his way to fifth place, in 18:44, and the critical part was that the Mustangs saw Ethan Mosure finish eighth in 19:07 and Joe Riccardi (19:14) take 10th place to hold off the Red Raiders at the wire.