With lots of depth on its roster, the Cicero-North Syracuse girls track and field team offered a legitimate challenge to Fayetteville-Manlius during last Thursday’s CNY Counties League National division championship meet at Baldwinsville’s Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium.
And the Northstars would pick up 131 points, but it wasn’t quite enough to catch the Hornets, who won with 157 points as Liverpool, led again by Ore Akinpelu, finished fourth with 81 points.
Akinpelu was among the top individuals at the league meet. In the 100-meter dash, she posted 13.15 seconds to beat C-NS’s Javielle Fanizzi (13.31 seconds), who finished second, while the Northstars’ Sasha Pulaski was fourth in 13.35 seconds.
In her specialty, the 400-meter hurdles, Akinpelu ran it in one minute. 7.10 seconds, nearly three seconds clear of F-M’s Rachel Dise (1:09.83), while C-NS had Madison Kolakowski take third place in 1:10.73 and Eliahnis Lewis (1:11.47) get fifth place.
One more win came for Akinpelu in the 200-meter dash, where in 25.99 seconds she got away from Baldwinsville’s Cierra Allen (26.86 seconds), while the Northstars put Pulaski in third place in 27.59 seconds and Taylor McLaughlin sixth in 28 seconds flat.
C-NS cleaned up in field events, especially the long jump, where Fanizzi went 16 feet 4 ¼ inches to beat teammate Hannah Szumloz, who was second with 15’6”. Liverpool’s Alexis Bittel was sixth as Fanizzi added a second in the triple jump with 33’10 ½” and Szumloz (32’9 ¼”) was fourth.
In the discus, the Northstars’ Shannon Hanmer threw it 91’5” and won by more than four feet over Baldwinsville’s Carly McNamara (87’5”), with Liverpool’s Leah Dixon sixth. But the Warriors won the shot put as Nelliah Watkins threw it 33’6”, with West Genesee’s J’Nazia Anderson (31’11 ½”) second and Hanmer gaining fifth place.
Nicole Herringshaw, fifth in the discus, cleared 5’2” in the high jump, second to B’ville’s Emily Soeder (5’4”), with Casey Baldwin (4’8”) taking fifth place. Whitney Hotchkiss, clearing 9 feet, got second in the pole vault with more misses than West Genesee’s Abby Uczen, who cleared the same height.
Szumloz was second, in 16.69 seconds, to West Genesee’s Brianna Richardson (16.47 seconds) in the 100-meter hurdles, while Cheyanna Colin was third in 16.79 seconds. Richardson also beat Fanizzi in the triple jump.
The Northstars had Jilliann Norris, who was fourth in the 800 (2:24.36), go 4:56.09 in the 1,500-meter run to grab third place, ahead of Liverpool’s Morgan Mahoney (4:59.72) in fourth place.
Liverpool had Jillian Stagnitta, Juliana Basla, Morgan Chewning-Kulick and Kristina Moore get second place in the 4×800 relay in 9:57.46, with F-M on top (9:36.86) as C-NS was fourth in 10:15.51, the Northstars also fourth in the 4×400 (4:18.95) ahead of Liverpool (4:23.99) in fifth. The Warriors got fourth place in the 4×100 relay in 53.88 seconds.
Stagnitta was second in the 2,000-meter steeplechase in 7:51.4 to F-M’s Alana Peal (7:25.4) as C-NS had Taylor Parry (7:57.4) in third place, while Chewning-Kulick took third place in the 800-meter run in 2:24.05.
Danelle Sims was sixth in the 400-meter dash, while Mahoney took fourth in the 3,000-meter run in 11:02.29, where C-NS teammate Jacqlynn Halstead and Savannah Stevens were fifth and sixth, respectively.
