For the second time in as many weeks, the Baldwinsville boys indoor track and field team rose above a host of strong challengers for a meet title.
In this case, it was the Bees earning 62 points in Friday’s Oscar B. Jensen Holiday Relays at SRC Arena, just enough to hold off runner-up Fayetteville-Manlius (54 points) and 18 other teams hard at work during the holiday break, even after a 24-hour weather postponement.
Unlike the Dec. 20 John Arcaro Invitational, this meet featured the format of two athletes per event, with times, distances and heights added up to see who did best. No four-person relay races were run.
Nate Randall and Shay Sargeant, second and third overall in the 300-meter dash, saw their times of 1:14.76 easily surpass Liverpool (1:16.86) and the field. Sargeant went on to help Sam Smith get second place in the long jump with combined leaps of 37 feet 6 1/4 inches.
Jeff Mahar was the individual champion in the 400-meter dash in 52.53 seconds, and with Dan Walker fourth (53.88 seconds), the Bees’ total of 1:46.41 topped F-M by 2.36 seconds.
Logan Marr and Kirk Anderson combined for a victory in the pole vault, their total clearance of 19′ exactly one foot better than second-place Homer (18′).
Ricky Sparks and Jeff Mahar earned third place in the 55-meter dash with a total of 13.87 seconds, while Alec Peinkofer and Josh Perez took third in the mile relay in 9:22.82. Jack Martin and Andy Fleming had their own fourth-place effort in the 3,200-meter run with 21:11.33.
Anderson teamed with Cody Young for a fourth-place finish in the shot put, throws adding up to 78′ 1″, as Harrison Warner and Noah Meyers were fourth in the high jump with a total clearance of 11′.
In the simultaneous girls Jensen Holiday Relays, B’ville picked up 29.33 points and slid into sixth place, not that far from Liverpool’s winning total of 54 points.
The Bees’ lone win came in the pole vault, where the key was that Lauren Fisher and Stephanie Vasteno were the only teammates to clear a height, so their 13-feet total gained the title.
Many of those other points came in the 400 sprint, where Mackenzie Ross and Marissa Lathrop were sixth and seventh, respectively, and their total time of 2:08.11 only trailed Liverpool (2:04.65) at the wire.
Hannah Wood and Maria McCaffrey rose to fourth in the 55 hurdles in 20.44 seconds, while Vasteno and Angelica Tomasello got fifth (15.85 seconds) in the 55 sprint. Melissa Voyer was third in the individual long jump (15’5 1/2″) as she and Tomasello got fifth place on the team side.
Emily Soeder and Kayleigh Bates tied for fourth in the high jump, with a total clearance of 9 feet. Ciera Allen and Katie Wicks took sixth in the 300-meter dash in a combined 1:34.54. The Bees were also seventh in the mile relay and eighth in the shot pout.
