Early on Saturday evening, the bus carrying the Liverpool boys cross country team received a grand welcome back home, complete with a police escort and wailing sirens.
It was the sort of greeting only winning a state championship could provide – and the Warriors have it.
Not content with upending the dynasty of Fayetteville-Manlius in the Section III meet on Nov. 7, the Warriors went to Monroe-Woodbury High School on Saturday morning and, collectively, produced a victorious effort that managed to top what it did against the Hornets at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill.
Earning a total of 61 points, Liverpool fended off a challenge from Section IV champion Corning, who finished second with 80 points. Arlington was third with 103 points.
Senior Ben Petrella, the Warriors’ pilot throughout its dream season, would leave the rest of the individual field behind him.
On a Monroe-Woodbury course that starts gentle and finishes with steep elevation changes, Petrella roared through it in exactly 15 minutes, 43 seconds, breaking the course record and topping the runner-up, Saratoga Springs’ Aidan Tooker, by more than 16 seconds, Tooker finishing in 15:59.3.
In order to pull away from Corning, though, Liverpool needed more than Petrella’s dominance. Sure enough, juniors Ty Brownlow and Stevie Schulz delivered, as Brownlow took ninth place overall, and sixth in the team standings, with a time of 16:17.3, and Schulz was 10th overall (seventh in the team race) with a clocking of 16:18.1.
Just to make sure that no one else caught up, senior Ryan Comstock earned 22nd place in the team race (42nd overall) in 17:06.7, with senior Terrell Coleman 25th on the team side (53rd overall) in 17:14.7 to wrap up the state championship.
Another Warriors senior, Dan Hunt, finished in 17:19.7 and was 57th overall, and 27th in the team standings, with junior Gabe Albert crossing the line in 18:08.3.
Section III swept the entire Class A slate, from team titles earned by Liverpool’s boys and F-M’s girls to the individual races won by Petrella on the boys side and Hornets eighth-grader Claire Walters on the girls side, Walters upsetting the favorite, Corning’s Jessica Lawson, by 0.3 seconds at the wire.
Also, the overall Section III teams gained first-place finishes, helped on the girls side by Liverpool senior Juliana Basla, who finished in 21:03.6 as she joined West Genesee’s Carly Benson (who finished fourth) and Maria Matkoski, plus Baldwinsville’s Justus Holden-Betts and Rome Free Academy’s Marian Draper.
