Even as the home team, the Baldwinsville cross country team had some difficulties in Wednesday’s three-team Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division meet with Cicero-North Syracuse and West Genesee.
At least the boys Bees were able to defeat the Wildcats 22-39, helped in no small part by Colin Delaney, who in 16 minutes, 43 seconds won a great individual race, 10 seconds ahead of the 16:53 from WG’s Matt Bartolotta.
Jack Michaels gave B’ville a third-place finish in 16:57, four seconds behind Bartolotta, but after the Wildcats’ Peter McMahon finished fourth (17:20), the Northstars swept the next five positions, its top pack separated by just 18 seconds at the finish line.
R.J. Davis led them, finishing fifth in 17:37, with Zach Bergman getting sixth place in 17:47. Evan Romano worked his way to seventh place in 17:52 as Josh Koeppe was eighth in 17:55 and Matt LeClair got ninth place in 17:59.
The girls race had B’ville taking a 15-50 defeat to C-NS and falling 23-32 to West Genesee, with the Bees’ lone top-10 finish coming from McKenzie Schmidt, who ran to eighth place in 21:45.
Up front, the Northstars sweeping the top seven spots, led by Kate Putman, whose 19:13 was more than a minute ahead of the 20:17 from Allison Newton and 20:20 from Gabby Putman.
After it takes on Henninger next Wednesday, the Bees will gear up to host the 68th annual Baldwinsville Invitational on Sept. 21, which starts with an open/alumni race at 9:15 a.m. and continues with modified, JV and varsity races throughout the morning and afternoon.
