It was not until the third week in December that area girls indoor track and field teams went into competition for the first time this winter.
What transpired at Tuesday night’s Jack Morse Holiday Relays at at Colgate University’s Sanford Field House was a tight, exciting meet where Fayetteville-Manlius ended up sharing top team honors with Cicero-North Syracuse.
At night’s end, the Hornets and Northstars each had picked up 50 points. Skaneateles was closest to them, in third place (43 points), as Jamesville-DeWitt rose to fifth place with 32 points and Baldwinsville (36 points) was fourth.
F-M’s first win came in the 55-meter dash relay, where Chantal Brennan (fourth) and Nicole Damico (eighth) combined for times of 15.83 seconds, holding off Skaneateles (15.99 seconds) to finish in front.
Then the Hornets prevailed in the 4×400 relay as Natalie Zazzara, Anna Perrotti, Sophia Ryan and Shaun Cheaten posted 4:21.25, with Corcoran (4.23.12) taking the second spot.
Anna Castro, paired with Shannie Nesher, earned second place in the high jump, clearing 9 feet between them as Baldwinsville (9’4″) won it.
As for J-D, it did best in field events, where Patrece Martin won the triple jump, going 34 feet 8 inches, and claiming team honors with Mackenzie Maxam as the pair went 62’6 1/2″ between them. F-M’s Christabel Ezidiegwu was second (33’9 1/2″) among individuals, pairing with Carolina Colon for third place on the team side with 61’9 1/2″.
The Red Rams also had Salwa El Hindi and Tangela Hightower finished second (59 feet 11 1/4 inches) to Nottingham (63’11”) in the shot put relay. Ezidiegwu and Anna Castro were fourth in the 55-meter hurdles in 20.60 seconds, where Martin and Manpreet Singh (20.44 seconds) took third place for J-D.
F-M was seventh in the shot put and long jump, where even a sixth-place finish might have merited the team title. But Abby Konys and Sophia Wojnovich worked their way to third place in the pole vault with a combined clearance of 13 feet.
J-D’s quartet of Laura Wengert, Kim Walsh, Samantha Jaffe and Emilee Carpenter made their way to second place in the 4×800 relay in 10:38.08 as only West Genesee (10:30.65) did better. F-M’s team of Meaghan Howe, Emily Verbeck, Maya Chiesa and Grace Hausladen got to third place in 10:44.40.
East Syracuse-Minoa’s Nina Zesky won the high jump, clearing 5’4″, and earned fifth-place points all by herself. The Spartans had its best finish in the distance medley relay, where Natalie Marra, Juliette Miller, Kate McGarrity and Gabby Pallotta got a third-place time of 13:16.54 as West Genesee (13:05.42) won here, too.
Just the same, CBA rose to third in the 4×200 relay, seeing the quartet of Hailey Dobbins, Anna Schug, Kianna Ferguson and Emily Tygart finish in 1:56.06 as Ryan, Nicole Amico, Carly Primo and Megan Josephson put F-M (1:58.07) in fifth place.
