To get to the top of the Section III indoor track standings, perhaps the Fayetteville-Manlius boys indoor track and field team just needed a different venue.
After a month at SRC Arena, the scene shifted to Colgate University’s Sanford Field House for Tuesday night’s George Constantino Memorial Invitational, and it was the Hornets gaining the most points.
Led by distance runners Nick Ryan and Colin Fitzgibbons, F-M had 58 points, 10 better than runner-up Cicero-North Syracuse. Baldwinsville, twice a winner this winter, had to settle for third place with 36 points as Jamesville-DeWitt, with 29 points, held on to fifth place.
Ryan won a 1,000-meter classic, dueling with Marcellus star Ryan Manahan as Ryan prevailed in two minutes, 32.94 seconds and Manahan (2:32.96) was just 0.02 seconds behind him.
Of course, in the 600-meter run it was Manahan, in 1:25.22, beating Ryan (1:26.65), who got second place as teammate Charlie Beeler was third in 1:27.52. F-M got 14 points out of that event and 16 from the 1,000, where Bryce Millar was third (2:39.62) behind Ryan and Manahan.
Meanwhile, Fitzgibbons got away for a victory in the mile, his time of 4:31.27 beating Jordan-Elbridge’s Jack Gugel by 2.68 seconds. Andrew Berger rose to third place in the 3,200-meter run in 10:05.88, with Connor Farrell fifth in 10:11.34, giving the Hornets 10 more points.
F-M’s quartet of Beeler, David Benman, Riley Hughes and Josh Hannon were second (8:43.20) to B’ville (8:22.30) in the 4×800 relay. Kyle Barber chipped in by finishing fifth in the 55-meter hurdles in 8.92 seconds.
As for J-D, Zach Leibmann accounted for 10 of those 29 points by himself when he won the pole vault, clearing 12 feet with fewer misses than Liverpool’s Travis Chewning-Kulick. Liebmann also claimed fifth place in the 300-meter dash in 38.75 seconds.
The Red Rams also contended in the 4×400 relay, where Mike Montanez, Nate Sturgeon, Jaysen Ramos and Austin Phileo, got to second place in 3:42.34, edged out by C-NS (3:42.12) at the wire. East Syracuse-Minoa had its best finish here, a seventh-place time of 3:55.09.
In the 4×200, Montanez, joined by Jordan Franklin, Will Cote, and Jaquan Tearney made their way to second place in 1:39.84, beaten only by Nottingham, who won in 1:36.74. In the 4×400, it was the same story as
Individually, Franklin was sixth (8.98 seconds) in the 55 hurdles, just behind Barber. Cote took eighth in the triple jump, where F-M’s Zhengyue Zhu was seventh. Taumeras Howard cleared 5 feet 4 inches for seventh place in the high jump, just out of the points, as Jaysen Ramos took ninth in the long jump.
