Once again, Jamesville-DeWitt’s cross country teams find themselves perched atop their respective Onondaga High School League Freedom divisions.
Not only did the Red Rams sweep these league titles with matching 8-0 marks, they wrapped them up Wednesday against their neighbors from East Syracuse-Minoa on the Spartans’ home course, which only made it sweeter.
In the girls meet, J-D battled its way past ESM 23-38, while also defeating Homer 19-39 as the Spartans got close to the Trojans, but had to accept a 27-29 defeat.
ESM’s Natalie Marra won the individual race in a time of 20 minutes, 28 seconds, followed by a pair of J-D runners as Hannah Butler finished second in 20:47, inches ahead of Rachel Fairbanks (20:48) in third place.
Then, after the Spartans’ Cindy Brownson got fourth place 20:51, Samantha Jaffe gave J-D a fifth-place time of 20:53. Homer, led by Arielle Moheimani (21:01) in sixth place, kept ESM at bay by having its top three runners in the next five positions, broken up by the Rams’ Megan Brown (21:44) and Kim Walsh (21:53), who finished eighth and ninth, respectively.
Moving to the boys side of the three-team meet, J-D was dominant here, too, getting past ESM 23-38 and also defeating Homer by a 20-41 margin.
Again, the Spartans challenged for individual glory, but the Rams’ Patrick Dye beat them to it, covering the Pine Grove course in 16:54, half a minute better than the Spartans’ tandem of Matt Young (17:25) and Jared Henry (17:26), who were second and third, respectively.
Then J-D made its decisive move with the trio of Brady Wing, Matt Murad and Miles Chandler, as Wing got to fifth place in 18:10 and Murad, in 18:40, held off Chandler (18:44) for sixth place. To wrap it up, Matt Salbert finished ninth, in 19:15, with Alexander Rodriquez 10th in 19:26.
