Everything that took place for Jamesville-DeWitt’s cross country teams in the last full week of October amounted to a triumph.
That included last Thursday’s Onondaga High School League Freedom division championship meet, held at East Syracuse-Minoa, where the Red Rams claimed both the girls and boys team titles.
For the J-D girls, it proved particularly exciting. ESM, on its home course, was favored, but with 36 points, the Red Rams edged the Spartans by a single point when all the totals were added up.
The battle started out front, where Rachel Fairbanks, in 19 minutes, 38.4 seconds, fended off two ESM runners, Gabby Pallotta (19:49.9) and Natalie Marra (20:05.5), who snared the second and third spots, respectively.
Another Spartan, Juliette Miller, raced to fifth place in 20:46.9, but four J-D runners would cross the line before the next ESM competitor did so.
Emilee Carpenter led the rally, taking seventh place in 20:54.2. Samantha Clemons finished eighth, in 21:36.9, while Jess Piccone was 10th (21:43.6) and Laura Wengert was 11th in 21:49.6.
Though five ESM runners followed, led by Cindy Brownson (22:04.7), Bridget Benz (22:07.0) and Maria Miner (22:20.9), J-D had accumulated enough points to hang on. The Spartans’ Morgan Young (22:33.4) and Brittany Kubecka (23:01.9) finished ahead of the Red Rams’ trio of Samantha Jaffe (23:15.5), Katie Pinkes (23:28.7) and Ashley Lawless (23:33.7).
Meanwhile, the boys OHSL meet saw J-D picking up 46 points, enough to get past runner-up Mexico (55 points) as ESM, with 70 points, settled for fourth place.
The Spartans’ Jesse Perrone finished second, in 17:14.8, behind Mexico’s James Gowans (17:02.2), but J-D started to take over when Nick Harron finished fourth in 17:33.9 and Billy Hohreiter got to fifth place in 17:43.3.
Further depth was shown when the Rams’ Isaac Tupper earned eighth place in 18:17.2 and Brady Wing got to 12th place in 18:43.9, both of them of ESM’s duo of Nick Schug (18:47.4) and Jacob Barker (18:48.7) in the 13th and 14th spots.
Matt Murad, in 17th place (18:59.8), and Nick Street, in 18th place (19:13.6), closed out J-D’s scoring column as ESM’s Kyle Willey was 19th, in 19:19.7, and Matt Young (19:32.9) finished 22nd.
Before all this, J-D met Fulton last Monday afternoon, the boys meet being the most crucial because first place in the OHSL Freedom division was at stake.
Coming through, the Red Rams edged the Red Raiders 27-30, as Nick Harron earned the individual title in 15 minutes, 55 seconds, nine seconds ahead of Fulton’s Kyle Loftus.
Of the top five finishers, only Harron and Hohreiter, in fourth place (16:16), wore Red Rams uniforms as Loftus, Bailey Lutz (16:10) and Mitch Lalik (16:36) rounded out the top five.
However, Murad began the comeback, claiming sixth place in 17:06, followed closely by Street (17:13) in seventh place. Wing, in ninth place (17:33) completed the scoring column, just ahead of Tupper (17:34) in 10th place.
The girls meet was far more lopsided, J-D prevailing 17-46 as Fairbanks, just two days removed from her race win in the Oct. 20 Chittenango Invitational, prevailed again, her time of 18:51 well clear of Emilee Carpenter, who was second in 19:11.
Piccone, in 19:46, completed a top-three sweep. Wengert took fifth place in 19:58 and Clemons (20:25) was sixth, leading another J-D push. Jaffe made her way to seventh place in 21:08, ahead of Pinkes (21:28), while Kelsey Kissane (21:57) and Lawless (22:10) also reached the top 10.
All of this sets up this Saturday’s Section III Class B championship meet, held on the same Vernon-Verona-Sherrill course that hosted the state meet a year ago. This year’s state championships, on Nov. 3, are at Elma Meadows, near Buffalo.
