A string of top-10 finishes, including one runner-up effort, highlighted the work of the area’stop indoor track and field athletes during Saturday’s state championship meet at Cornell University’s Barton Hall.
As part of the girls Intersectional Medley Relay team, CBA’s Anna Schug and East Syracuse-Minoa’s Natalie Marra, paired with Juliana Basla (Liverpool) and Westhill/Bishop Ludden’s Annibel Coolican, finished second in 10 minutes, 34.5 seconds, trailing only Section XI (Suffolk County, Long Island), who won in 10:32.79.
This followed a dramatic girls 1,500-meter run where Fayetteville-Manlius junior Annika Avery nearly caught Miller Place’s Tianna Guevara and West Genesee’s Laura Leff.
Trailing Leff by more than three seconds at the bell to signify the final lap, Avery tore through those last 200 meters in 34.22 seconds, getting to a time of 4:35.82, just behind Leff (4:35.50) and Guevara, who in 4:35.42 edged Leff by eight-hundredths of a second.
Avery’s teammate, Alana Pearl, was eighth in the 3,000-meter run in 10:13.06, while Jenna Farrell (10:26.29) slid into 13th place. Pearl and Farrell, paired with Jessica Howe and Olivia Ryan, helped F-M grab a fourth-place finish in the 4×800 relay in 9:33.53 as Benjamin Cardozo (9:21.51) prevailed.
F-M’s 4×200 relay quartet of Nicole Amico, Anna Perrotti, Shauna Cheathen and Olivia Ryan qualified for the finals with a time of 1:51.09 and then ran that championship race in 1:52 flat to take seventh place, New Rochelle winning in 1:41.61.
Schug nearly got to the finals in the 55-meter dash, running 7.37 seconds in the opening heat and 7.36 seconds in the semifinals, just 0.002 seconds from getting to the championship race.
As for ESM’s Nina Zesky, she medaled in the high jump, clearing 5 feet 5 inches to earn sixth place as Shayla Broughton (Medgar Evers) won with 5’8”. F-M’s Christabel Ezidiegwu was 16th in the triple jump (35’5”) and 21st in the long jump, going 16’1 ¾”, while Jamesville-DeWitt’s Patrece Martin went 34’10 ¼” in the triple jump to get 19th place.
Moving to the boys state meet, F-M’s trio of Bryce Millar, Andrew Berge’ and Peter Ryan ran together in the 3,200-meter run, where Millar earned a third-place finish in nine minutes, 14.22 seconds, not far from Northport’s Tim McGowan, who won in 9:07.80. Berge’ finished seventh, in 9:18.01, while Ryan made his way to eighth place in 9:21.49.
Later, in the 4×800 relay, Millar and Berge’, joined by Jonathan Abbott and Kyle Barber, had a strong, steady race and got to sixth place (fifth among public-school sides) in 8:10.79, with Chaminade getting the victory in 7:55.80.
J-D’s Zach Liebmann moved up to 10th place in the pole vault, clearing 13’6” as Warwick Valley’s Todd Uckermark managed to clear 16 feet to win the state title and ESM’s Caiden Moynihan could not clear a height. CBA’s Jack Brower finished 12th in the 600-meter run in 1:24.42, watching as Lynbrook’s Luke Germankos (1:21.31) got to the front.
