For nearly a decade, no one has proven able to challenge the Jamesville-DeWitt girls track and field team once the Section III championships rolled around.
And that proved true again Thursday at Fulton, where the Red Rams, getting three individual victories from star junior Alexandria Payne, produced 125 points overall for its ninth consecutive sectional title as Central Valley Academy was second with 78 points.
Payne would tear through the 100-meter hurdles in 15.45 seconds, nearly two full seconds ahead of the field. It was closer in the 200-meter dash, but Payne still won in 26.55 seconds over Watertown’s Haleigh Foster (26.90) and the field, with Denise Yaeger seventh for the Rams in 28.04 seconds.
This effort was capped in the long jump, where Payne, going 16 feet 3 ½ inches, held off Cortland’s Kara Perkins (15’9 ¾”) as Yaeger did get points thanks to a fourth-place leap of 15’3 ¾”.
J-D also piled up points in the 3,000-meter run – 23 of them, to be precise. Hannah Butler won the race in 10:18.66, pulling away from Ayla Erwin, who got second place in 11:28.53 as Abby Palin was fourth in 11:41.73 and Amelia Gilbert (12:24.37) was sixth.
A closely fought pole vault saw the Rams’ Gabrielle Tanksley clear 9’9” to beat out Whitesboro’s Tiffany Khiamdavanh, who topped out at 9’6”. Lauren Nandal was victorious in the shot put, her toss of 32’11” beating CVA’s Lindsay Gravelding (32’4”) by seven inches as Marinah Williams (28’9 ¾:”) got seventh place.
Amelia Gilbert, Cara Glazier, Grace Bridge and Olivia Budelmann were second (10:29.46) to CVA’s winning 10:21.03 in the 4×800 relay. Sophia Vinciguerra was third in the 1,500-meter run in 5:14.05, with Abby Palin fourth (5:19.58) and Abby Leavitt fifth in 5:22.23. Vinciguerra also got third place in the 800-meter run in 2:36.55 as Glazier was fifth in 2:38.76 and Budelmann seventh in 2;43.05.
Monica Hernandez-Olivera was sixth (1,665 points) and Gwyneth Botto seventh (1,432 points) in the pentathlon. Megan Brown got sixth place in the 2,000-meter steeplechase in 8:36.8 as Samantha Aitken (8:37.9) was seventh. Carolyn Kolceski took seventh place in the discus and Allison Virgo was seventh in the triple jump.
East Syracuse Minoa would finish sixth in the sectional meet with 51 points, including a pair of runner-up efforts, one of them by Mia Montgomery, whose triple jump of 34’8 ¼” trailed only Watertown’s Janeisia Crockett, who won with 35’10 ¾”.
Jennah Ferrari finished second in the high jump, clearing 4’10” to only trail Whitesboro’s Marissa Burke (5 feet) as J-D’s Laeticcia Bazile was third, also topping 4’10”. Mackenzie Bourdon chased Payne in the 100 hurdles and got third place in 17.58 seconds, also finishing fourth in the 400-meter hurdles in 1:14.44.
Bourdon nearly won the 4×100 relay with Mia Montgomery, Sami Wysocki and Marissa Greiner as the Spartans were second in 52.33 seconds behind Watertown (51.51) and J-D settled for fifth place in 54.12 seconds.
Wysocki got fifth place in the 200 in 27.92 seconds and, with Bourdon, Jacinta Hensinger and Kat Boland, finished fourth in the 4×400 relay in 4:37.37. Lindsey Crego finished fifth in the discus with a throw of 85’11” and also was seventh in the shot put.
Hensinger was fifth in the 400-meter dash in 1:05.30, with Boland eighth in 1:06.25. Melanie DeFeo, Katherine Jacobs, Sage Almstead and Kassandra Burr were fifth in the 4×800 in 10:50.36 as Almstead, on her own, was fourth in the 800 in 2:38.72, with Burr (2:43.96) in eighth place. Maria Hall was ninth in the long jump.
