Both of Chittenango’s cross country teams found difficulty in last Wednesday’s three-way OHSL Freedom division meet against its closest neighbors, Jamesville-DeWitt and East Syracuse-Minoa, at Jamesville Beach Park. Still, the week ended on a good note when Josiah Durfee emerged as the individual champion during Saturday’s Sherburne-Earlville Invitational. In a time of 17 minutes, 15.5 seconds, Durfee topped Hamilton’s Austin Hirsch (17:47.2) by more than half a minute, while John Durfee worked his way to third place in 17:53.3. Jason Ceresoli worked his way to ninth place (19:01.9), while Kenny Galbraith was 14th (19:39.9) and Brad Murray claimed 17th place in 19:55.7. Over in the girls race at Sherburne-Earlville, Hamilton seventh-grader Sage Hurta struck again, winning in a time of 10:16.9, more than 90 seconds ahead of S-E’s Sofeia Eddy at the wire. Three days earlier, the boys Bears had a real chance to interrupt the Red Rams’ 22-meet league win streak, but could not quite pull it off, falling to J-D 24-33 and also taking a 27-30 defeat to ESM. Josiah Durfee still had a strong individual effort, getting second place in 16 minutes, 45 seconds as the Spartans’ Mike Coogan (16:04) took individual honors. John Durfee also ran well, claiming fourth place in 17:16, but no other Chittenango runner reached the top 10. In the girls race at Jamesville Beach, the Bears lost to ESM 27-32 and fell to J-D 18-41. The Rams had four of the top five individual finishers, Ameena Dye prevailing in 20:29, as Chittenango’s Jordan Donnelly led her side by finishing sixth in 21:54. Hannah Murphy was right behind, in seventh place in 21:59.