When the West Genesee indoor track and field teams made their way to Utica College’s Hutton Dome for last Friday’s CNY Counties League championship meet, they were far from alone.
Not only were the CNYCL teams deciding league honors, so were teams from the Center State Conference and Tri-Valley League, turning it into a long affair that started late in the afternoon and ended close to midnight.
When all was done, the girls Wildcats had 55 points for fifth place as Fayetteville-Manlius (121 points) finished on top. Meanwhile, WG’s boys could only manage 23 points and finished seventh in the CNYCL, Cicero-North Syracuse (123.5 points) holding off Baldwinsville (111.5 points) to win it.
In the girls meet, the Wildcats won the 4×400 relay as Carly Benson, Lauren Ferris, Kendall Dombroske and Megan Fox finished in four minutes, 10.29 seconds, the best Section III time this season. F-M was second in 4:13.41.
Megan Delia gained individual honors for the Wildcats in the 300-meter dash, finishing in 43.15 seconds, comfortably ahead of Baldwinsville’s Maria Henwood (43.55 seconds) in the runner-up spot. Delia also took fourth place in the triple jump (33 feet 9 inches) and paired with Fox, Ferris and Madalyn Benson to get fourth place in the 4×200 relay in 1:55.09.
Benson nearly won the 600-meter run, going 1:38.08 to finish just behind F-M’s Sophie Ryan, who won in 1:37.60 as Abigail Kuppinger was seventh in 1:48.53. Emily Young took third place in the 1,000-meter run in 3:03.66 as Young, Benson, Dombroske and Amanda Lowther were second (9:57.93) to F-M (9:49.91) in the 4×800 relay.
Fox was fifth in the long jump, going 14’9 ½”. Mia Mitchell finished fifth in the 1,500-meter run in 5:03.72 as Taylor Rech got sixth place in 5:07.81. Amanda Lowther was seventh in the 3,000-meter run in 11:36.14, with Madalyn Benson 10th in the 55-meter hurdles.
WG tied for its best boys finish in the 4×400, where Esisas Brumfield, Joe Francisco, Ryan Dunning and Paul Stannard got to second place in 3:43.45 behind B’ville’s winning time of 3:33.37.
David Leff matched that effort in the mile, going 4:27.82 and trailing Liverpool’s Josh Hickmott (4:27.73) by just nine-hundredths of a second. In the 4×800, Leff, Dunning, Stannard and Sean Byrnes took fifth place in 8:50.69.
Andrew Berry made it to fifth place in the 55-meter dash in 6.78 seconds, while Russ Graziano was sixth in the 600 in 1:33.79, two spots ahead of Mark Kopp (1:38.41) in eighth place. Berry and Brumfield joined Javier Monserrate and Griffin Dombroske as WG was fifth in the 4×200 in 1;38 flat.
Cole Nowak had a seventh-place shot put toss of exactly 40 feet. Monserrate got ninth place in the 300 in 39.07 seconds and added a 10th-place finish in the long jump. Jack Richards was 10th and Patrick Trivison 11th in the 3,200-meter run, with Tim Huppman 10th in the 55 hurdles, two spots ahead of Dan Gill, and Ryan Allen 11th in the 1,000. Francisco was 12th in the triple jump.
