Both inside and outside their respective leagues, area high school track and field teams continued to work through the April school break.
In fact, West Genesee had its CNY Counties League opener, against Liverpool, in two venues on Wednesday afternoon. In both of them, the Wildcats lost, a tight 74-67 boys match at LHS Stadium and, back home in Camillus, a 79-62 defeat to the Warriors.
On the boys side at Liverpool, WG swept the individual sprints. Sean Howard ran the 100-meter dash in 11.0 seconds, while Naesean Howard needed 23.1 seconds to prevail in the 200-meter dash and Luke Potash claimed the 400-meter dash in 53.7 seconds.
Not stopping there, Sean Howard also took two field events. He went 19 feet 1 ½ inches in the long jump and had a top triple jump of 40’ 9” as Zach Perkins cleared 10’ and won the pole vault.
Though Martin Leff earned a 3,200-meter victory in 10:30.2, Liverpool claimed the rest of the distance events and swept all three relays. Zavon Watkins, a senior bound for Penn State, won the 800-meter run (2:04.0) and mile (4:54.0) and ran a leg in the 4×800, too.
In the girls meet, wins were a bit more elusive for the Wildcats. Paige Copeland did take the 100 hurdles in 17.9 seconds, while Amy Hannahan needed 2:32.2 to prevail in the 800. Melissa Bakowski cleared 4’8” in the high jump and Shannon Fitch threw the shot put 26’5”.
Liverpool had too much all-around talent, though, whether it was Jazmine Herbert sweeping the 100 and 200 sprints or Ore Akinpelu claiming both the 400 sprint and 400 hurdles. Here, as in the boys meet, the Warriors also earned first-place finishes in the three relay events.
As for Westhill/Bishop Ludden, it got a nice tune-up in last Monday’s Tully Invitational, where the girls team picked up 37 points for eighth place in the 13-team field and the boys team was 11th out of 15 entrants with 26 points.
Betsy Black and Emily Washburn went 1-2 in the girls 800-meter run. Black won the event in a time of 2:30.83 and Washburn recorded 2:32.35 for the second spot as Annibel Cooilcan (2:35.51) as fourth. That accounted for most of Westhill/Ludden’s points.
Also, in the 4×800 relay Black and Washburn teamed with eighth-grader Annabel Coolican and freshman Molly Clark to win that race in 10:46.09, more than 14 seconds ahead of runner-up Mexico (11:00.18).
Kayla Wild was fourth in the shot put, with a toss of 27’ 8 ½ ‘’, while Maya Vortice (26’ 7 “) landed in sixth place. Wild also was seventh in the discus, just out of the points.
Moving to the boys side, Christian St. Amour needed 23.89 seconds to prevail in the 200-meter dash, leaving Chittenango’s Jason Given (24.23) in second place. St. Amour also took fifth in the 400-meter spring in 55.04 seconds.
Another victory came in the 110-meter high hurdles, where Jack Honis took the final in 15.96 seconds, nearly half a second better than Hannibal’s Jordan Skipworth (16.49 seconds).
Westhill/Ludden also was fifth in the 4×800 relay as Vincenzo Carr, Mike Herholtz, Kyle Fitch and Dan DeMauro posted a time of 9:27.52. Carr also got sixth in the mile in 5:00.68 and Liam Rodgers sixth (11:05.76) in the 3,200-meter run.
