Onondaga — Strong efforts on both sides, helped Chittenango’s boys and girls track and field teams both finish sixth in their respective divisions during Wednesday night’s Section III Class A championship meet at Onondaga Community College’s SRC Arena.
The boys Bears had 41 points, with the girls picking up 27 points. Each was in the middle of 12-team packs headed by Jamesville-DeWitt, who swept the team titles by a narrow margin over East Syracuse Minoa, New Hartford and Oswego on the boys end and by a big margin on the girls end.
In the first boys race of the night, the 3,200-meter run, Mike Capeling gave the Bears a victory in 10 minutes, 2.55 seconds, nearly half a minute ahead of New Hartford’s Nolan Durr (10:30.76) at the line. Capeling nearly won the mile, too, going 4;45.73 to take second behind ESM’s Matt Young (4:40.89).
Nick Stanton went 38.58 seconds in the 300-meter dash, second to Mexico’s Logan Burrows (37.98 seconds). In the 4×400 relay, Stanton, Ward Beley, Dylan Price and Devin Myers got to third place in 3:56.37, where New Hartford (3:46.46) prevailed.
Chittenango got points in the other relays, too. Capeling, Price, Beley and Caleb Prenoveau were fourth (9:20.41) in the 4×800, while in the 4×200 the Bears saw Myers, Dave Gratien, Devlin Cameron and Ersilio Cerminero get fourth place in 1:54.99.
Moving to the girls meet, McKenzie Dombroski finished second in the 3,000-meter run in 11;31.75, trailing only New Hartford’s Brianna Wilbur, who won in 11:09.09.
Kaitlyn Swain contended in the 600-meter run, taking third place in 1:42.30, less than a second behind the winning 1:41.71 posted by another New Hartfod runner, Elizabeth Haddad, while Krissy Roberts got fourth place in the long jump, going 15 feet 7 ½ inches and also was fourth (32’7 ½”) in the triple jump.
Swain later made it to fourth place in the 300-meter dash in 44.34 seconds. Dombroski, Devin Gordon, Alyssa Crystal and Maggie Love gained sixth place in the 4×800 relay, with Eryn Thompson, Alex Rheaume, Lindsay Kent and Alyssa Kolb seventh in the 4×400 as Swain, Kolb, Roberts and Lindsay Kent were seventh in the 4×200.
