In a brand-new venue, the Skaneateles girls indoor track and field team made an immediate impact during Wednesday night’s Jack Morse Relays.
Two seasons of wandering to far-flung locations (like SUNY-Cortland, Colgate University and Hamilton College) ended as the SRC Arena at Onondaga Community College played host to its first high school sporting event.
And the Lakers fared quite well, earning 24.33 points to seize fifth place, by far the best among small schools. Cicero-North Syracuse won with 76 points as Jamesville-DeWitt (48 points), Liverpool (44.33 points) and Fayetteville-Manlius (32 points) rounded out the top four.
Skaneateles was victorious in the 1,600-meter sprint relay. Senior Shelby McNeilly, junior Emma Ford and sophomores Taylor Woodruff and Madeline Adams posted a time of four minutes, 26.26 seconds, nearly three seconds better than runner-up East Syracuse-Minoa (4:29.23).
Senior Erin Tonzi, sixth among individuals in the triple jump (30 feet 2 ¾ inches), joined sophomore Natalie Roche as the Lakers finished third with a combined 57 feet 6 ½ inches.
Woodruff was sixth in the long jump (14 feet 7 ½ inches) as she and Ford earned another third-place finish with a total of 28 feet 6 ¼ inches.
By herself, senior Kaela Fiutak, fresh off her state diving championships appearance, cleared 8 feet in the pole vault, tied for third place among individuals and tied for fourth in the team standings.
Sophomore Alana Navaroli was fifth in the shot put with a toss of 27 feet 8 inches, with the Lakers’ quartet of Jane Gaffney, Morel Malcolm, Jenn DeRosa and Julia Poorman seventh in the distance medley relay in 14:15.30. Junior Corrine LaFrance was 10th in the 55-meter dash.
Moving to the boys portion of the Jack Morse Relays, Malik Merritt nearly won the 55-meter dash. He hit the line in 6.82 seconds, the same total as CNS’s Mark Broughton and J-D’s Amani Jackson, but settled for third place as he and Alex Weiss (7.89 seconds) were fifth in the team portion.
Dan Wolfanger, B.J. Kerr, J.J. Gregg and Matt short got to sixth place in the 4×400 relay in 3:51.82. Patrick Biver had a fifth-place triple jump of 37 feet 11 ¾ inches. Taylor Weyneth was sixth in the 55-meter hurdles in 8.62 seconds and helped Austin Amory, Nico Petrocci and Ty Winkleman get 10th in the 4×800 relay in 9:40.46.
As a follow-up, both Skaneateles teams went to Saturday’s Ithaca College High School Invitational and had lots of high finishes.
Adams won the girls 3,000-meter run in a time of 10:54.61, the only runner to break the 11-minute mark, while Ford earned a victory in the 300-meter dash in 42.77 seconds. Fiutak was third in the pole vault, clearing 9 feet, while Navaroli took eighth in the shot put. Kaitlyn Neal was eighth in the 1,500-meter run in 5:18.22.
Merritt was fourth in the boys 55 sprint in 6.81 seconds, while Weyneth earned fourth in the pole vault (11 feet) and fifth in the 55 hurdles in 8.76 seconds. Wolfanger was sixth (39.09 seconds) in the 300 as Khiary Gale cleared 5 feet 8 inches for seventh place in the high jump.
