Onondaga — Just because Skaneateles was facing only half of the Central New York Indoor Track Association teams during Wednesday’s Oscar B. Jensen Holiday Relays at SRC Arena didn’t mean that the Lakers were shielded from facing big-name, large-school competition.
Yet even with that, and even with the format of having two times, distances and heights count in various events, the Lakers still flourished, earning 58 points to take fourth place in the girls meet, just behind third-place West Genesee (61.5 points) as Fayetteville-Manlius won with 84 points.
A big win for the Skaneateles girls came in the 55-meter dash, where Angela Krause and Amanda Wetmore were third and fourth, respectively, among individuals. Put together, they finished in 15.74 seconds, edging out Christian Brothers Academy (15.80 seconds) for team honors.
Mia Grasso then took over in the high jump, first by winning the individual event with a clearance of 5 feet 1 inch, and then by combining with Aubreah Lynn, who cleared 4’6″, to win with 9’7″ as no one else could even get a total clearance of 9 feet.
Mikaela Terhune and Brady Iles got close to winning the 55-meter hurdles, finishing in a combined 19.71 seconds, inches behind Baldwinsville’s top time of 19.66 seconds.
Before that, Grasso took second place in the individual 500-meter run in 1:23.04, edged out by West Genesee’s Maria Matkoski (1:23.03) by one-hundredth of a second. Grasso and Katelyn Ellison were second (2:51.21) to the Wildcats (2:48.84) on the team side, too.
Julia Willcox was third in the individual mile in 5:21.45 and, paired with Natalie Condon, made it to second place on the team side in a combined 11:14.81 as F-M won with 10:11.28.
Willcox then joined Maddie Peterson as Skaneateles finished third in the 600-meter run in 3:31.65, this before Wetmore and Olivia Gage finished third in the 300-meter dash in 1:30.35, just behind runner-up F-M, who had 1:30.17.
continued — Nieve Morse and Jordynn Richards had combined shot put throws of 42 feet 11 1/2 inches to get to fourth place. Krause was fifth in the individual triple jump with a best attempt of 30’10”.
While this was going on, the Skaneateles boys indoor track team earned 23 points for ninth place in a 17-team CNYITA field, but that included a victory of its own.
That came in the 300 sprint, where Tommy Hagen was second in the individual race in 38.31 seconds to CBA’s Tom SanGiacomo (37.30 seconds), but with Jack Kimm fifth (39.20 seconds), Skaneateles, with a total time of 1:17.51, held off Baldwinsville (1:17.95) to prevail.
Hagen also paired with Brahm Malcolm in the 55 hurdles, where the Lakers, in 18.50 seconds, rose up to second place, behind Baldwinsville’s top time of 17.88 seconds.
Luke Rathgeb and Sam McClintic rose to fifth place in the 600 in 3:16.43. Luke Palmer, by himself, cleared 5’6″ in the high jump and earned enough points to tie for fifth place.
Also, Josh McCabe and Noah Cliff tied for sixth with Fowler in the 55 sprint, the Lakers and Falcons each finishing in 14.84 seconds, while Kevin Danaher and Andrew Hinchman were sixth (65’6 1/4″) in the shot put.
Just missing out on more points, Ryan Willcox and Graham McCarthy were seventh in the 800-meter run in a combined time of exactly five minutes, while Steve Ciaccio and Nick Paciorek were seventh (6:13.98) in the 1,000-meter run.
