Less than a week after they first got together, the Westhill/Bishop Ludden and Solvay boys track and field teams got together once more, this time at Chittenango High School as part of Monday’s Onondaga High School League Liberty division championship meet.
And though the Bearcats got exceptional individual performances, especially from Brian McLeod, it was the Warriors, with 158 points, ruling the meet as Solvay, with 110.5 points, settled for second place. Jordan-Elbridge was fifth (58 points) and Marcellus, with 24 points, was eighth.
Corey Wilkinson had a part in scoring 38 of Westhill/Ludden’s points. Wilkinson threw the discus 139 feet 11 inches, heaved the shot put 48’9 ¾”, finished second (11.43 seconds) to Solvay’s Nick Cometti (11.39 seconds) in the 100-meter final and, in the 4×100, teamed with Antoine Montgomery, Mike Crisalli and Ben Rath to pull away and win in 45.18 seconds, where Solvay was fourth.
Cleaning up in those sprints, Westhill/Ludden saw Christian St. Amour win the 200-meter dash in 23.42 seconds, with Rath (23.63 seconds) in third. St. Amour added a second (52.52 seconds) in the 400-meter dash and ran a leg in the 4×400 relay, where the Warriors were third in 3:41.46.
Moving to distance events, Casey Bunce, in 4:38.07, held off Solvay’s Matt Cregan (4:42.81) and J-E’s Jack Gugel (4:44.86) to win the mile, with Bunce’s teammate, Dan DeMauro, in fourth place.
Also, Westhill/Ludden’s Peter Guy was victorious in the five-event pentathlon, earning 2,359 points, while J-E’s Tyler Jackson (2,078 points) was second and Solvay’s Brandon Bamba was fifth. Xavier Fleurinor was third in the 110 high hurdles in 16.52 seconds and also third (1:02.82) in the 400 hurdles, while Montgomery was third in the long jump (18’9”), fourth in the 100 (11.83 seconds) and fifth in the pole vault.
Solvay got three individual victories, and 30 points, from McLeod. He went 40’8” to prevail in the triple jump, won the long jump with 19’8 ¾”, and in the high jump was the only competitor to clear 6 feet, with Westhill/Ludden’s Jordan Roland second (5’10”) in that event. Josh Marotti, clearing 11’6”, won the pole vault, also taking fifth in the 110 hurdles ahead of Roland in sixth place.
The Bearcats got to second in the 4×800 relay as Eric Goodrich, Mike Nicolini, Matt Battaglia and Colton Francemone had a time of 8:36.47, only behind Hannibal (8:32.87), as Westhill/Ludden settled for fourth place. Matt Cregan, in 10:15.41, was second in the 3,200-meter run, with Francemone fifth and Westhill/Ludden’s Liam Rodgers (10:25.67) between them in third place.
Battaglia, on his own, took third in the 400 (53.99 seconds), with Nate Carr fourth, as Battaglia also got fourth in the 800 (2:07.17), one-hundredth of a second ahead of Goodrich in fifth place.
In the 400-meter hurdles, J-E’s Dylan Whittico, in 59.62 seconds, edged Phoenix’s Justin Rhodes (59.66 seconds) at the line to prevail, this before he was second (23.58 seconds) to St. Amour in the 200. That preceded an 800-meter run where the Eagles’ Bill DiRenzo held off Bunce, 2:00.21 to 2:00.30, at the line, with Westhill/Ludden’s Peter Lynch (2:03.88) in third.
The Eagles’ quartet of Dylan Whittico, Austin Whittico, Jacob Patterson and Austin Milton got to second place in the 4×400 relay in 3:38.43, with Westhill/Ludden third (3:41.46) and Solvay (3:42.45) in fourth place. Solvay also was fourth (48.76 seconds) in the 4×100 behind the Warriors.
Tyler May gave J-E a third-place finish in the shot put, heaving it 43’7”, and added a fifth in the discus with a 125-foot throw.
Missing Ryan Manahan (who had won the mile at the Loucks Games in White Plains two days earlier), Marcellus still had Justin Garn claim victory in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 10:28.14, where Westhill/Ludden teammates Vincenzo Carr and Peter Lynch were third and fourth, respectively, and Solvay’s Isaiah Lee was fifth. Garn later took fifth place in the triple jump.
The Mustangs’ Nate Waite and Josh Finch made it to the 100-meter final, where they were fifth (11.90 seconds) and sixth (11.97 seconds), respectively.
Waite improved to a fourth in the 200 (23.99 seconds), ahead of Will Coon in sixth (24.40 seconds). Alan Stopen was fifth in the mile in 4:56.60 as Brian O’Connell cleared 5’4” for fifth place in the high jump and Mike Abbott was sixth in the high jump.
