It was exactly the kind of start that the Cicero-North Syracuse cross country teams wanted.
Venturing north to compete in last Saturday’s South Jefferson Invitational in Adams, the Northstars beat 11 other teams in the boys competition by a comfortable margin and won a thriller over the combined Westhill-Bishop Ludden side to prevail on the girls side.
In that girls meet, C-NS picked up 36 points to edge Westhill-Ludden (37 points) by a single point, mainly because it placed four runners inside the top 10 and got its fifth runner a top-15 finish, too.
Jilliann Norris was the individual champion in 21 minutes, 11 seconds, pulling away from the Westhill-Ludden tandem of Genny Corcoran (21:16.7) and Alaina Kenny (21:25.1) as the Northstars’ Annina Marullo finished fourth in 21:28.7.
Mia Pestle made her way to seventh place, in 22:36.5, with Emily Dembrowski rising to 10th place in 23:16.0. All of Westhill-Ludden’s scorers were done when freshman Sarah Davis, in 23:31.3, claimed 14th place. Anything less would have swung the team title away from C-NS.
Northstars runners Julia Rupp (24:28.8), Lexi Pirro, Molly Camire, Ashley Irvine, Haley Pestle and Megan Trubia also recorded top-30 finishes.
As for the boys race, C-NS had a far more comfortable victory, getting 34 points to pull away from runner-up New Hartford, who was second with 70 points.
Andrew Bearkland joined Norris to give the Northstars an individual sweep, as Bearkland’s time of 17:16.6 held off Adirondack’s Ryan O’Rourke (17:18.1) by 1.5 seconds.
Sam Barber finished sixth, in 18:31.8, and close behind him was Eric Bowen in eighth place (18:43.2) and Joe Tricarico (18:46.2) in ninth place. David Ware, in 11th place (18:51.7), rounded out the scoring column as Nate Poirier was 12th in 18:53.3. Brandon Martin was 20th in 19:12 flat, four spots ahead of Zach Wagner (19:22.5) as John Perperian was 30th.
