Perhaps the most satisfying moment of the season for the Skaneateles boys cross country team arrived last Saturday when it pulled out a victory in the Small School division of the Tully Invitational.
Amid an eight-team field, the Lakers earned 54 points, just enough to hold off the host Tully Black Knights, who finished second with 60 points as Barker (Section VI) was third with 61 points.
Individually, Luke Rathgeb finished second as his time of 17 minutes, 15.1 seconds beat everyone except Tully’s Daniel Bort, who pulled away to win in 16:45.7.
Tully had three of the top six finishers in Bort, Jackson Deal and Bryce Florian, but the Lakers caught up thanks to Joe Norris taking eighth place in 18:12.1, Caleb Bender finishing 11th in 18:26.7 and Nate Azzam getting 13th place in 18:34.4.
Since the Black Knights’ Wiley Shaw finished 20th, Skaneateles needed a good run from Tyler Lewis to clinch it – and got that as Lewis finished 24th in 19:00.8. Matt Persampieri (19:29.1) and Nick Paciorek (19:39.3) also had top-40 finishes. Chris Burgher finished in 21:49.1 and Will Swarts finished in 22:47.7.
Meanwhile, in the girls Small School race at Tully, the Lakers earned 79 points to edge Lansing (83 points) for second place.
Georgia McSwain finished 10th in 22:05.8, just ahead of Natalie Condon, who was 11th in 22:20.2. Elyse Ossum got to 20th place in 23:22.8, edging out Hope Cross-Jaya (23:31.8) in 21st place. Nicole DeRosa finished 27th in 25:03 flat.
Tully won the girls Small School race with 38 points and Black Knights freshman Brooke Rauber, with her winning time of 17:49.5, set a course record and ran faster than all but six of the male runners in both the Large and Small School divisions.
