As the lone Cazenovia girls cross country representative at Saturday’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class C championship meet, senior Jeanette Cudney made her program quite proud.
The Lakers’ senior was one of the top finishers in the individual sectional race, held over a picturesque 3.1-mile course at Queensbury High School, in the shadow of the Adirondacks.
When the race got underway, Cudney made her way to the front pack, and kept in close touch with the leaders, which included three of her regular-season rivals – Skaneateles sophomore Kaitlyn Neal, Marcellus senior Rachel Garn and Jordan-Elbridge sophomore Abby Gugel.
Cudney couldn’t match them, but she still crossed the finish line in exactly 19 minutes, 10 seconds, putting her in 15th place amid a field of 130 runners. And it helped Section III, with 335 points, finish second in the team standings behind Section I, who prevailed with 214 points.
Up front, Neal finished second in 18:26.3 and Garn was third in 18:34.7, both of them finishing just behind Onteora’s Julia Rubin-Armstrong, who won the state Class C title in 18:22.4.
As for Cudney’s Section III All-Star teammates, Garn set the pace, but Gugel also ran well, getting to seventh place in 18:59.4. Phoenix’s Haylie Virginia made her way to 29th place in 19:37.3 as CBA’s Megan Ann Pierce was 47th in 20:01.2.
Meanwhile, in the state Class B girls race, Chittenango junior Anna Galbraith, who was second in the Section III championships to Westhill/Bishop Ludden’s Genny Corcoran, led her sectional All-Star group to an eighth-place finish.
Galbraith, in a time of 19 minutes, 2.6 seconds, took 39th place in a 121-runner field. Jackie Miller (South Jefferson, 19:07.5), Hayley Tasselmyer (Cortland, 19:14.4), Emilee Carpenter (Jamesville-DeWitt, 19:20.3) and Jade Auchmoody (Homer, 20:15.7) followed as Corning’s Jessica Lawson took the state title in a clocking of 17:42.7.
