Mark Vanmarter and Alex Christensen helped the Liverpool boys track and field team to a second-place finish, just ahead of Cicero-North Syracuse, in Wednesday’s Section III Class AA championship meet at Bragman Stadium.
The Warriors had 110 points, while the Northstars grabbed third place in 80.5 points. Both finished behind Fayetteville-Manlius, who won with 138 points.
Vanmarter unleashed a top long jump of 22 feet 1 inch, and then prevailed in the triple jump by going 42’5 ½”. He nearly got a third title, too, in the high jump, topping 6 feet, but Corcoran’s Charles Stokes (6’2”) prevailed there.
As for Christensen, he broke up F-M’s monopoly in distance races, taking the 800-meter run in one minutes, 59.37 seconds to edge past the Hornets’ Bryce Millar (1:59.44) at the line as teammate Dan Muldoon finished third, in 2:00.27.
C-NS’s Pete Girardi went 15.61 seconds in the 110 high hurdles to beat Utica Proctor’s Kavon Watson (16.06 seconds) and the field. Girardi also won the 400 hurdles in 54.71 seconds, beating F-M’s Kyle Barber (55.13 seconds), who had won the 400-meter dash earlier in the meet.
Morgan Austen, who battled Girardi all season in those hurdles events, proved unstoppable in the five-event pentathlon, picking up 3,133 points, beating out F-M’s Kyle Harbour, who was second with 2,778 points.
Mark Hentges won the pole vault by clearing 12’3” with fewer misses than F-M’s Justin Jones, with Connor Osborne third as he cleared 11 feet and James Dwyer (10’6”) tied for fifth. Nick Antontello added a fifth in the high jump.
C-NS also saw Joe Castaldo finish second in the discus, throwing it 142’8” to beat Liverpool’s Geoffrey Bell (141’5”) in third place. Bell, with a toss of 51’6 ¼”, topped Castaldo (48’9 ½”) for second place in the shot put, as Rome Free Academy’s Robert Alder won both events.
Liverpool’s Ben Petrella ran the mile in 4:23.86 to get third place, with Connor Buck fourth in 4:27.11. Petrella also was fourth in the 3,200-meter run in 9:34.35, again beating out Buck, who was fifth in 9:45.84.
Christensen, Muldoon, Collin Gwilt and Peter Gonzalez ran the 4×400 in 3:29.01, with Girardi, Nate Hilt, Matt Williams and Jeremy Rivera third in 3:30.72 as F-M won in 3:27.95. This followed a 4×800 relay where Christense, Muldoon, Nick LeClair and Jacob Rowell finished in 8:01.72, again with F-M (7:57.12) in front of them and the Northstars in fourth place (8:16.01) behind them.
Gonzalez and Vanmarter joined Brandon Mayfield and James Williams to get second place in the 4×100 relay in 44.84 seconds, with C-NS in fifth (46.06 seconds) as Rome Free Academy (44.08 seconds) won there.
A day earlier, the C-NS and Liverpool girls track teams went to Central Square for its sectional Class AA meet, and finished in the middle of the pack, the Northstars earning 58 points for fifth place and the Northstars 54 points for sixth place, well back of F-M, who won with 145.5 points.
Brittany House would give C-NS a second-place finish in the pentathlon, earning 2,195 points to only trail Rome Free Academy’s Tricia Loso, who had 2,684 points. Liverpool’s Alexis Bittel finished third, with 2,063 points, as teammate Hejal Patel was fifth with 1,659 points.
Ore Akinpelu did prevail for the Warriors in the 400 hurdles, her time of 1:06.84 holding off RFA’s Teresa Anken (1:08.01) as C-NS’s Madison Kolakowski (1:10.51) was fifth.
In a close 100-meter final, Akinpelu finished in 12.82 secodns, just behind Utica Proctor’s Hilda Jordan, who won in 12.79 seconds to go with victories in the long jump and triple jump. Akinpelu also took second (25.90 seconds) to Corcoran’s Patrice Williams (25.55 seconds) in the 200-meter final.
Juliana Basla, Morgan Mahoney, Morgan Chewning-Kulick and Kristina Moore were third in the 4×800 relay in 10:07.93, with C-NS getting fifth place in 10:37.21. The Northstars were also fourth in the 4×100 relay in 52.16 seconds, where Liverpool was seventh. The Warriors got fifth place in the 4×400 in 4:20.27, just ahead of C-NS (4:20.67) in the second spot.
C-NS’s Taylor Parry got a third-place time of 7:41.8 in the 2,000-meter steeplechase. Cheyanna Colin was fourth in the 100-meter hurdles in 16.86 seconds, with Casey Baldwin fifth (16.89 seconds) and Hannah Szumloz sixth. Szumloz took fourth in the long jump, going 15’6 ½”, with Javielle Fanizzi fourth in the triple jump (34’9 ¼”) and Szumloz getting sixth place this time around.
Nicole Herringshaw cleared 5 feet in the long jump, and took fourth place, with Casey Baldwin eighth. Whitney Hotchkiss, clearing 8’6”, got to fourth place in the pole vault.
Liverpool saw Nelliah Watkins throw the shot put 35’2 ¼”, with C-NS’s Shannon Hanmer fifth (31’9 ½”) as Hanmer added a fourth in the discus (92’2”) behind RFA superstar Mariah Mays, who holds the Section III record here and won with 134’7”.
The Northstars’ Jilliann Norris took fourth in the 1,500-meter run in 4:52.90, best outside of the F-M group, with the Warriors’ Abby McNamara sixth. In the 3,000-meter run, McNamara was fourth, in 10:53 flat, while Chewning-Kulick took sixth (2:23.23) in the 800-meter run, edging out Norris in seventh place. Savannah Stevens was ninth in the 3,000.
