Displaying all of its many talents, the Westhill girls indoor track and field team earned first place in last Wednesday’s Onondaga High School League Liberty/Patriot division championship meet at Manley Field House.
Having not competed since the Jan. 22 John Arcaro Invitational, the Warriors shook off more than two weeks of weather-enforced rest and took charge.
In all, Westhill had 130 points, prevailing in a 10-team field where the runner-up, Skaneateles, had 81 points. CBA was third, with 50 points.
Remarkably, the Warriors did all this despite winning just three events. Laura Zimmerman and Brittany Pelsue had a 1-2 finish in the 1,500-meter run, as Zimmerman won in a time of 4:56.39 and Pelsue was second, in 5:09.94. Zimmerman would also win the long jump, going 16 feet 4 inches.
In an exciting 4×800 relay, Emily Owen, Katie Lenkiewicz, Lissa DiPaola and Katie Powers put together a time of 10:16.32, beating Skaneateles (10:16.37) by five-hundredths of a second after two miles of racing.
Working together, Owen and Carolyn Clark would pile up points. In the 600-meter run, Owen grabbed second place, in 1:41.87, with Clark (1:42.81) in third place. Owen would also finish second in the triple jump, going 32 feet 1/2 inch as teammate Clark (31 feet 3/4 inch) took third place.
Clark’s best finish was in the 300-meter dash, where she was second, in 44.76 seconds, just ahead of Emily Ondrejka, in third place (44.98 seconds). Abby Lee contributed a second-place time of 9.92 seconds in the 55-meter hurdles.
Elena Mangano claimed second place in the pole vault as she cleared 8 feet 6 inches, while Pelsue ran to second place in the 1,000-meter run in 3:13.36. Zimmerman finished fourth (7.95 seconds) in the 55-meter dash and Jennifer Woodhouse finished fourth in the shot put.
Westhill also finished second in both the 4×200 relay (1:55.51) and 4×400 relay (4:25.08) as Ondrejka, Pelsue, Liz Coholan, Bethany Dickinson, Mackenzie Rainone and Caroline Buonocore all took part.
Westhill hopes the weather can hold off so it can return to Manley this Wednesday for the Section III championship meet, moved from its original Monday date by the shuffling of boys and girls schedules in the face of all the snow.
