Though the Liverpool boys indoor track and field team was unable to unseat Fayetteville-Manlius for the Section III Class AA championship, it did earn league honors a week later.
During Wednesday night’s CNY Counties League National division meet at SRC Arena, the Warriors, led by Ryheim Lawes, Alex Christensen and Mark Vanmarter, picked up 135 points, beating out the Hornets, who settled for second place with 129 points. Cicero-North Syracuse finished third with 84 points.
Lawes got started in the 55-meter dash, prevailing in 6.66 seconds as Brandon Mayfield gained third place with 6.89 seconds. In the 300-meter dash, Lawes rolled to victory in 37.67 seconds, with C-NS’s Nate Hilt third in 38.31 seconds and the Warriors’ Peter Gonalez (38.81 seconds) in fourth place.
Moving to the long jump, Lawes went 20 feet 4 ½ inches, finishing second to Vanmarter, who won with 21’9 ½” and also finished second in the triple jump, going 40’7” behind F-M’s Kyle Barber (40’9 ¼”) as C-NS’s Pete Girardi (38’3”) was third.
Vanmarter also got second place in the high jump, clearing 5’10”, but with fewer misses than West Genesee’s Ejay Harrell, who ended up on top. C-NS’s George Reader cleared 5’7” to finish fourth.
Christensen did his part with two close wins in distance races. First, in the 1,000-meter run, Christensen edged out F-M’s Bryce Millar, 2:34:44 to 2:34.47, while Nick LeClair (2:41.87) was fifth.
Much the same thing happened in the 600-meter run, Christensen this time going to the finish line neck-and-neck with the Hornets’ Kyle Barber, but winning in 1:25.53 to Barber’s 1:25.54, a difference of 0.01 seconds. The Warriors’ Jacob Rowell was sixth in 1:28.67.
Dylan McCarthy helped Liverpool by finishing second in the mile in 4:34.42 behidn Millar, who won in 4:28.65. Connor Buck got to third place in the 3,200-meter run in 9:46.65, with McCarthy (10:04.66) in fifth place.
Christensen, McCarthy, LeClair and Rowell finished in 8:17.67 in the 4×800 relay, just behind F-M (8:16.54) at the line as C-NS was fifth in 9:00.47. It was the same in the 4×200, where Gonzalez, Mayfield, James Williams and Arfasa Haley posted 1:38.54, but F-M won in 1:36.53, with the Northstars’ quartet of Hilt, Daquan Mathis, Nick Golembieski and Allen Garnes fourth in 1:39.42.
C-NS’s Morgan Austen won the 55-meter hurdles in 7.88 seconds, with Girardi second in 7.88 seconds. Austen and Girardi joined Hilt and Evan Russell as the Northstars, in 3:35.07, prevailed in the 4×400 relay, where Liverpool’s quartet of Gonzalez, Collin Gwilt, James Williams and Arfasa Haley was third in 3:39.93.
In the shot put, Joe Castaldo won for C-NS, heaving it 51’11” to beat Liverpool’s Geoffrey Bell, who was second with 50’3 ¾” as Golembieski got fourth place with 38’1 ¾”. Connor Osborne cleared 11 feet for second place in the pole vault, with Tate LaPorte fourth and Liverpool’s David Lewis in fifth place, though both cleared 10 feet.
Austen also was third in the long jump (19’10 ½”) behind Lawes and Vanmarter. Colin Greenseich had a sixth-place time of 10:15.67 in the 3,200, while Brian Bausinger and Andrew Bearkland were seventh and eighth, respectively, in the mile.
