While regular-season honors are nice, doing well in the post-season really makes a campaign memorable.
And that’s what the Skaneateles girls track and field team found when it won over nine other sides in Monday’s Onondaga High School League Liberty division championship meet at Marcellus High School.
With a total of 133 points, the Lakers held off the combined Westhill/Bishop Ludden squad, who finished second with 114 points. The host Marcellus Mustangs finished third with 99 points.
A key to the victory was Skaneateles sweeping all three relay races, starting in the 4×800, where Madeline Adams, Liz Dwyer, Julia Willcox and Jillian Van Leer posted 10 minutes, 13.92 seconds, more than 14 seconds clear of Westhill/Ludden (10:28.36) and the field.
Moving to the 4×100, a different Laker quartet prevailed as Katelyn Ellison, Amanda Wetmore, Laurel Parker and Ashley Bonocore crossed in 52.12 seconds, with Hannibal (53.06 seconds).
To close it out, yet another different Skaneateles quartet – Olivia Gage, Raenah Campbell, Aubreah Lynn and Shannon Roberts – got together and, in 4:16.51, pulled away from Westhill/Ludden (4:22.95) to win the 4×400 relay.
Individually, Taylor Woodruff nearly got her own sweep in the sprints. She qualified for the 100-meter final in 12.80 seconds and, though slowing down to 13 seconds flat, still beat Marcellus’ Abbie Fallon (13.11 seconds) as Wetmore (13.31 seconds) claimed third place.
In the 400-meter dash, Woodruff, in 1:00.68, beat out Roberts (1:01.86) for a 1-2 Skaneateles finish, and she nearly won the 200-meter dash, too, finishing in 26.69 seconds, just behind Jordan-Elbridge’s Julie Hines (26.67 seconds) as Parker was fifth in 27.65 seconds.
Kaitlyn Neal got to second place in the 1,500-meter run in 4:53.38. Adams took second (2:24.19) and Willcox fourth (2:27.51) in the 800-meter run, with Dwyer fourth in the 3,000-meter run in 11:29.67. Remarkably, Marcellus senior Rachel Garn won all three of those distance events.
Campbell, in 16.27 seconds, was second to Altmar-Parish-Williamstown’s Kylee Bartlett (15.32 seconds) in the 100-meter hurdles, and went 1:14.93 to take third place in the 400-meter hurdles.
Eighth-grader Mia Grasso earned third place in the pentathlon with 1,896 points, behind a pair of girls four years older than her, Phoenix’s Haylie Virginia (2,691 points) and Westhill/Ludden’s Anna Ross (2,484 points).
In field events, Megan Molnar, clearing 8 feet 6 inches, tied for the top effort in the pole vault, but finished second because Westhill/Ludden’s Katherine Doherty had fewer misses. Woodruff made her way to third place in the long jump, going 15’7″ to give her 34 individual points for the day.
Meanwhile, in the boys OHSL Liberty meet, Skaneateles claimed sixth place, with 49 points, as Jordan-Elbridge, with 106 points, went to the top spot and Solvay (89 points) finished second.
Patrick Biver gave the Lakers a victory in the 400 sprint, where in 51.12 seconds he beat J-E’s Dylan Whittico (52.23 seconds) by more than a full second. Later, in the 200, Biver finished second in 23.32 seconds to Whittico, who won in 22.82 seconds.
But Biver was victorious once more in the 4×400, joining Jeff Kringer, James Hackler and Cooper Watt as the Lakers posted a time of 3:35.34, well clear of runner-up Solvay (3:39.42) as no one else broke the 3:40 mark.
The Lakers nearly won the 4×100 here, too, as Kringer, Tommy Hagen, Max Messie and Jacob Peterson finished in 46.78 seconds to finish second behind Institute of Technology Central, who won in 46.08 seconds.
Individually, Kringer made it to third place in the 100 sprint in 11.65 seconds, with Solvay’s Nick Cometti (11.33 seconds) prevailing. Watt took fifth place in the 800 in 2:05.42.
Eli Goodell cleared 5’8″ in the high jump, also getting to fifth place to go with a seventh (18’4″) in the long jump, ahead of Watt in ninth place. Chase Corcoran threw the discus 106’8″ and gained sixth place, with Peterson earning a seventh-place triple jump of 36’1 3/4″ to just miss the points.
Scott Harrop, Steve Ciaccio, Alex Wulff and Joe Capozza were fifth in the 4×800 relay in 9:48.38. Hagen took eighth in the 110 high hurdles, while Messie was seventh in the pole vault (10 feet) and eighth in the 400 hurdles and Alex VanRiper finished eighth in the pentathlon. Chris Niebuhr was 11th in the mile.
