Verona — While one Fayetteville-Manlius cross country team continues on its inevitable championship path, the other got halted short of the prizes it wanted.
The girls Hornets, with Kaitlyn Neal proving her toughness at the forefront, earned yet another Section III Class A championship Saturday at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill, while F-M’s boys took a four-point defeat to Liverpool but still qualified three of its runners for next Saturday’s state meet at Monroe-Woodbury.
All season long, F-M and Liverpool had dueled on the boys side. Four times they had competed with each other, with the Hornets coming out on top on three of those occasions, including the CNY Counties League championship meet Oct. 14 at Baldwinsville.
Now they confronted each other on the tough VVS course, amid the season’s biggest stakes. Only one team per section gets to advance to the state meet, and Liverpool would pull it out by collectively running well in the last mile of the course to wipe out F-M’s early edge.
The Warriors’ Ben Petrella, as he has done all season, proved the top individual, pulling away from the pack and crossing the finish line in 15 minutes, 40.4 seconds, nearly half a minute ahead of F-M’s Peter Ryan, who was second in 16:10.1.
Though Ryan and Patrick Perry (16:14.6) took the second and third spots for the Hornets, Ty Brownlow closely followed them, and grabbed fourth place in 16:17.6.
Then Liverpool’s Steve Schulz made his way to sixth place in 16:19.8, well clear of F-M’s third runner, Joe Walters, who was seventh in 16:34.8. Having grabbed the lead, the Warriors extended it when Ryan Comstock grabbed eighth place in 16:37 flat.
It was Terrell Coleman clinching the sectional title for the Warriors with his 13th-place finish in 17:05.4, something F-M could not overcome despite Bryan Geehrer finishing 10th (16:50.4) and Ben Otis (17:08.3) claiming 14th place, with Jack Bolton getting 16th place in 17:18 flat.
continued — With their efforts, Ryan, Perry and Walters earned berths in the state meet with Section III’s All-Star team that also includes West Genesee’s David Leff and Central Square’s Sean Kuehn.
None of this tension was present in the girls sectional Class A meet. F-M used its deep lineup to wipe out the rest of the field, finishing with 16 points as West Genesee (76 points) held off Liverpool (87 points) for the runner-up spot.
Neal set the pace, and that, in itself, was unremarkable, given her great track record. What made it amazing was that, a week earlier, she was in the hospital after getting hit by car while on a morning run.
Though bruised by that hit, Neal got back to training, and then got back to winning at VVS. She would get a serious challenge from WG’s Carly Benson in the race for individual honors, but in a time of 18 minutes, 7.5 seconds, Neal held off Benson (18:13.1) to finish in front.
But F-M grabbed the next seven finishing spot. Claire Walters led that pack, getting to third place in 18:17.1, exactly four seconds behind Benson. Samantha Levy, in a clocking of 18:36.2, earned fourth place, while Palmer Madsen took fifth place in 18:44.2. Rebecca Walters was sixth in 18:54.9.
Jenna Farrell, who was seventh in 19:17.5, beat out Phoebe White (19:19.4) for that spot, with Sophia Ryan ninth in 19:26.2. Reilly Madsen finished 16th in 20:13 flat.
