One more big race remained before Cazenovia’s cross country teams could turn their collective attention to this Saturday’s Section III Class C championships at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill.
The Lakers made the long trip west to Jordan-Elbridge for last Wednesday’s Onondaga High School League Liberty division meet, and both the boys and girls sides would record third-place finishes.
Stepping up in a big way, Cazenovia’s boys runners picked up 75 points for its OHSL Liberty meet, easily ahead of fourth-place Hannibal (99 points) as host Jordan-Elbridge, with 51 points, edged out Westhill-Ludden (52 points) by a single point for the team title.
It was Cazenovia’s best finish in the league meet in 11 years, and it was accomplished by a roster that mostly included underclassmen (six of the top 10 runners are juniors or younger), but had two seniors at the forefront.
No one could catch Hannibal’s Jason McFarland, whose time of 17:17.1 beat CBA’s Dominic Morganti (17:44.5) by nearly half a minute.
But Kevin Ridings still had a superb race, the Lakers’ senior finishing in exactly 18 minutes, eight seconds to claim fourth place as fellow senior Sean Satchwell made his way to seventh place in 18:44.3. Both Ridings and Satchwell were first-team All-League selections.
Brendan Coffey finished 19th, in 19:24.9, four spots ahead of Matt Mistur (19:37.9) in 23rd place. James McPherson made his way to 29th place in 19:50.5 to round out the scoring column as Cooper Holgate finished 35th, in 20:07.8. Ian Marshall (20:37.5), Sam Galasso (20:59.0) and Jacob Wells (21:10.0) were close behind.
Competition was quite tough on the girls end. Even with Clara Rowles on hand, Cazenovia, with 73 points, finished behind Skaneateles (63 points), but they both had to chase Westhill-Bishop Ludden, who won the team title with 39 points by placing four runner s in the top seven.
Asking Clara Rowles to compete hard for the third time in eight days was asking a lot, but the eighth-grader, ranked no. 2 in the state in Class C, still got to fourth place in exactly 20 minutes, 17 seconds.
State no. 1-ranked Skaneateles junior Kaitlyn Neal (who didn’t have to race the previous weekend, as Rowles did winning at the Chittenango Invitational) won in 19:41.4, with Westhill-Ludden’s Genny Corcoran second (19:51.9) and J-E’s Abby Gugel, on her home course, third in 19:57.9.
Freshman Meggie Hart made her way to eighth place in 21:41.1, while Alexa Tillman, in 23:29.5, beat out teammate Katie Robbins (23:29.9) for 19th place. Caitlin Clonan, in 22nd place (23:41.2), rounded out the scoring column as Adrien Owens was 32nd, in 24:26.1, just ahead of Whitney Denison (25:09.2) and Maddie Phillips (25:34.2) at the line.
Now they all could concentrate on practices for the sectional meet, on a VVS course that would be closed for a full week leading up to the races because of heavy rains in recent days and concerns that the 3.1-mile layout would get chewed up too much before the hundreds of runners would arrive.
The top teams in each of the four classes, along with top individuals outside of the winning team, will earn berths in the Nov. 8 state meet at SUNY-Canton.
