What Jamesville-DeWitt’s cross country teams wanted to do was to sweep both of the Onondaga High School League Freedom division championship meets, just as they had both gone through regular-season league competition with undefeated marks.
But it did not quite turn out that way.
The girls Red Rams did prevail Wednesday on the rain-drenched Pine Grove course at East Syracuse-Minoa, but the J-D boys settled for second place behind Marcellus.
Picking up 52 points to beat out Homer’s runner-up total of 72 and host ESM’s third-place showing of 92 points, the J-D girls relied on its depth as it claimed 11 of the top 30 finishing spots.
Yet it was Spartans junior Natalie Marra winning the individual race in exactly 19 minutes, 37 seconds over Cortland’s Hayley Tasselmyer (19:56.9), while the top J-D finisher, sophomore Hannah Butler, made her way to third place in a time of 20:10.8.
Senior Rachel Fairbanks claimed sixth place, in 20:51.3, and fellow senior Samantha Jaffe got to 10th place in 21:36.7, but the Rams really took over with its next wave of runners.
Junior Kim Walsh led that group, taking 16th place in 22:27.7 as Ayla Erwin (22:28.2) finished 17th and Casey Keane (22:32.5) gained 19th place. Then Alexandra Street made it to 23rd place in 22:45.8, right in front of Emily Shapiro (23:01.4) and Alisa Salbert (23:06.9) in the 24th through 25th spots. Ashley Lawless was 27th in 23:09.6, two spots ahead of Allison Hohreiter (23:17.6) in 29th place.
ESM saw Marra prevail and Cindy Brownson get to fourth place in 20:29.6, but it only had one other top 20 finisher – Megan Vandewarker (22:10.3), in 14th place. Olivia Ravera (24:26.4), Makalia White (24:36.9) and Sarah Tingley (24:42.7) all had top-50 finishes.
Moving to the boys side, J-D’s sophomore sensation, Patrick Dye, was the individual champion, his time of 16 minutes, 32.6 seconds easily clear of Mexico’s Jake Zedack (16:49.7) in the second spot.
However, the Red Rams ended up with 78 points, behind Marcellus, the league newcomer, whose total of 66 points prove enough to beat J-D, Chittenango (82 points) and Fulton (86 points) at the top.
The Rams saw senior Brady Wing get to seventh place, in 17:33.1, while Matt Murad finished 13th in 18:15.4. The Mustangs countered by having its third, fourth and fifth runners cross the line before Miles Chandler (18:57.8) and Matt Salbert (18:58.4) did so in the 28th and 29th spots. Troy Killian (19:16.2), James Pieri (19:16.7), Alexander Rodriguez (19:29.3) and Sam Glisson (19:41.3) were close behind.
ESM, with 154 points, settled for sixth place, even though Spartans junior Matt Young finished sixth in a clocking of 17:29.5 and sophomore Jared Henry was eighth, in 17:39.9. Far back of them, Jacob Perrotta got to 51st place in 19:51.1, with Joe Rosaschi (20:04.7) and Matt Thompson (20:35.5) further back.
