Sidelined by a broken foot earlier this season, Shaun Thompson has healed up quite nicely – as the rest of the CNY Counties League field found out Saturday at Jamesville Beach Park.
Thompson, a senior, went right to the top of the standings with his fine effort at the league meet and helped the Bees finish second, with 60 points, behind defending state champion Fayetteville-Manlius, who won with 27 points.
On the rugged 3.1-mile Jamesville Beach course, Thompson steadily pulled away from his main challenger, Cicero-North Syracuse’s Chris Buchanan. With a time of 15 minutes, 37.4 seconds, Thompson beat Buchanan by 8.2 seconds.
F-M won by occupying half of the top 18 spots in the final order. But the Bees fended off CNS for the runner-up spot by having sophomore Alec Peinkofer work his way to eighth place in 16:35.7, well clear of the Northstars’ second runner, Anthony Lupia, who was 14th.
Then Andy Fleming, in 15th place (17:05.2), and Josh Perez, who was 16th in 17:07.8, both beat the third and fourth CNS finishers to secure the runner-up spot. Ethan Pacheck closed out the scoring as he ran to 24th place in 17:26.4, with Matt Pond 38th (18:09.5) and Ronnie May 47th in 18:24.1.
Meanwhile, in the girls CNYCL meet at Jamesville Beach, B’ville managed a fourth-place finish, earning 110 points as F-M, the nation’s top-ranked team, dominated once more, sweeping the top four positions.
Eighth-grader Rachael Miller’s impressive season continued as she landed in 12th place with a time of 19:52.7. She was the youngest runner in the field.
Another young runner, freshman Nicole Lyons, gained 23rd place in 20:55.6, while sophomore Julia Johnson got 28th place in 21:18.9. Mallory Warner was 37th (21:45.9) as Sydney Slavik worked her way to 40th place in 22:02.6.
B’ville’s runners now head to Vernon-Verona-Sherrill High School for this Saturday’s Section III Class AA championships. The girls race is at 11 a.m., while the boys head off at 12:30.
