For much of Wednesday’s Section III Class AA championship meet at Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium, the Fayetteville-Manlius girls track and field team chased Liverpool at the top of the standings.
But with a rush of top finishes in two distance races near the end, the Hornets worked its total to 143 points and passed the Warriors (131 points) to earn the sectional team championship. Host C-NS was third with 94 points.
F-M was in second place with three races to go, but caught up in the 3,000-meter run, where Kaitlyn Neal blazed to a time of nine minutes, 32.27 seconds and Samantha Levy was second in 10:14.50. That, plus Claire Walters fourth (10:37.22) and Palmer Madsen sixth (11:00.39), gave the Hornets 23 points in the event to Liverpool’s six.
Maintaining that momentum, Susan Bansbach, Phoebe White, Sophie Ryan and Christy Berge’ got third place (4:09.97) ahead of the Warriors (4:16.34) in the 4×400 relay. And in the 2,000-meter steeplechase, Levy won in 7:08.55, with Madsen getting second place in 7:44.48 and White sixth in 7:49.08 as Reilly Madsen (8:07 flat) was eighth.
Before all this, F-M had won the 4×800 relay, but that wasn’t easy, either. Ryan, Berge’, Jenna Farrell and Rebecca Walters posted 9:32.98, just enough to hold off the challenge of West Genesee, who was second in 9:34.09.
Then the Hornets got a 1-2 sweep in the 1,500-meter run, where Neal won in 4:34.76, pulling away from Levy (4:44.26) as Palmer Madsen (4:53.64) beat out Ryan (4:55.32) for fifth place and F-M got 21 total points. Neal was second (2:20.48) to West Genesee’s Carly Benson (2:18.29) in the 800-meter run, with Ryan fourth in 2:20.51 as Berge’ (2:26.33) edged Rebecca Walters (2:26.34) for seventh place.
Gwenn Shepardson contributed 18 points, winning the 400-meter hurdles in 1:07.25 to edge out Baldwinsville’s Skyler Dukat (1:07.61) as Nina Basile finished 10th, this after a 100-meter hurdles where Shepardson, in 15.86 seconds, lost by one-hundredth of a second to Liverpool’s Tionna Brown, who won in 15.85 seconds.
Cady Barns nearly won the triple jump, going 35 feet 9 inches to finish a close second behind C-NS’s Shayla Webb, who won with 36’2 ½”. Barns also was eighth in the 100-meter dash in 13.06 seconds and helped Berge’, Bansbach and Arianna Madill get eighth place (53.15 seconds) in the 4×100 relay.
Barns went 16’9 ½” in the long jump to get fourth place, while Febe Oley was ninth, going 15’11 ½” after she cleared 8 feet in the pole vault for fourth place. Brittany Travis threw the discus 87’10” to take fourth place and was sixth (32’6 ¼”) in the shot put.
Sydney O’Dell contended in the pentathlon but settled for third place with 2,364 points, while Grace Hausladen got sixth place with 2,066 points. Bansbach needed 1:00.37 for a third-place finish in the 400-meter dash.
F-M’s boys track team got its main highlights from a dramatic comeback by Connor Florczyk in the pentathlon and wins from Bryan Geehrer and Chibu Ezidegwu, even though the Hornets only took fourth place with 57.33 points as host C-NS (152.33 points) and Liverpool (122 points) battled at the top.
Florczyk was trailing Baldwinsville’s Nate Jaquint going into the pentathlon’s final event, the 1,500-meter run. But with a time of 5:10.15 and 503 points to Jaquint’s 346, Florczyk won by a single point, 2,667 to 2,666, while C-NS’s Jason Hughes surged into third place with 2,594 points.
Bryan Geehrer earned a win, too, going 9:40.55 to pull away from Liverpool’s Stephen Schulz (9:47.22) and take the 3,000-meter steeplechase, where Eli Capri was sixth in 10:34.43 and Brendan Pearl was seventh in 10:42.55.
In the mile, Geehrer contended, going 4:23.17 to finish second, two seconds behind Liverpool star Ben Petrella, who won in 4:21.16. Patrick Perry, in 9:28.76, was also second to Petrella (9:25.48) as Joe Walters got fifth place in 10:07.78, with Max Perry seventh (10:17.55) and Ben Otis eighth (10:21.65).
Ezidegwu went to his specialty, the triple jump, and unleashed a top attempt of 43 feet 8 inches, nearly a foot ahead of C-NS’s George Reader, whose top attempt was 42’8 ¼”.
Jack Boltman, Mark Vaccaro, Kenny Kaiser and Michael Young were third in the 4×800 relay in 8:29.01, while Kaiser and Young got joined by Sean Donlon and Vincent Perry for fifth place in the 4×400 in 3:39.90. Romello Mitchell tied for sixth in the high jump, clearing 5’6”, adding a 10th-place triple jump of 37’7” behind Ezidegwu and finished 11th (18’2 ¼”) in the long jump.
Young got 11th place in the 400 sprint in 54.39 seconds. Kaiser was 11th in the 800 in 2:10.44, two spots ahead of Boltman (2:12.27). Donlon was eighth in the 400 hurdles in 1:02.61 and Mukhtar Qubasiy was 10th in 1:04.28.
Deion Travis, throwing the discus 109’3”, landed in 11th place. Armando Adrian was 15th in the 100 sprint in 12.10 seconds, but helped Vincent Perry, Max Gibbs and Ben Testani finish seventh (47.33 seconds) in the 4×100.
