Neighboring boys track and field teams from Jamesville-DeWitt and East Syracuse-Minoa battled each other in last Wednesday’s OHSL Freedom division championship meet at Chittenango High School.
When all the scores were added up, the Red Rams had won, with 146 points, negating its second-place regular-season finish behind the Spartans, who had to settle for the runner-up spot with 116 points.
J-D based its victory on a near-sweep of the relay events. In the 4×100, David Salbert, Nick Buniak, Mark Smith and Dexter Green posted a top time of 45.07 seconds, beating Fowler by more than a second.
Then in the 4×400, Tim Kendrick, Bumkuth Jiak, Max Smith and Vern Edwards won in 3:40.17, while Jiak and Kendrick also helped Max Smith and Dan Frank finish second in the 4×800 in 8:27.92.
Individually, J-D went 1-2 in the long jump, with Adam Tyson victorious at 19 feet 11 1/4 inches and Buniak second with 19 feet 7 3/4 inches. Salbert took over and won the triple jump, going 41 feet 4 inches as Kendrick (38 feet 3 inches) got third place.
Michael Paul helped out with a third in the discus (104 feet 5 inches) and fourth in the shot put (39 feet 3 inches), while Tyson cleared 11 feet 6 inches for second in the pole vault and Buniak finished sixth in the high jump.
On the oval for J-D, Semmel got second place in the 110-meter high hurdles (16.56 seconds) and fourth in the 400 hurdles (1:03.76), while Frank ran to second in the 3,200-meter run in 10:22.54 and fourth in the mile in 4:49.64. Tyson finished fourth in the 110 high hurdles.
Buniak was a close second in the 100-meter dash (11.62 seconds), as Salbert (11.94 seconds) finished fourth. Jiak was strong in the 800-meter run, finishing second in 2:08.46, while Edwards ran to fourth in the 400-meter dash in 54.88 seconds.
ESM’s runner-up effort came despite all kinds of wins. Jeff Sweeney beat Jiak to take the 800-meter un in 2:05.88 and added a victory in the mile in 4:33.69, while Nick Sadlocha needed 9:58.90 to win in the 3,200. Sweeney, Sadlocha, Christian Larrabee and Craig Andrianos won the 4×800 relay in 8:26.55, beating J-D by 1.37 seconds.
Jaquan Williams, in 11.59 seconds, edged past Buniak and teammate Darien Coplin (11.77 seconds) to win the 100-meter dash and was third in the 200 (24.50 seconds) behind Coplin (24.38 seconds). Larrabee added a second-place finish in the 400 in 53.37 seconds.
Pete Ferstler got third in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 11:17.06, while Zach Van Aiken had a runner-up effort in the 400 hurdles in 1:03.56.
Josh Haas rose to third place in the pole vault when he cleared 11 feet, as Lenny Kerznowski got fifth place in the long jump, going 19 feet 1 1/2 inches. J-D’s Sam Spalding beat ESM’s Louis Sharp, 1,885 points to 1,763, for third place in the pentathlon.
