By having all of its runners finish within the top nine, the Sknaeateles girls cross country team earned a sweep of last Wednesday’s OHSL Liberty division meet against Hannibal and Solvay.
Georgia McSwain led the Lakers’ efforts, winning the race in 20 minutes, 20 seconds as the Warriors’ Reilly Harris finished second in 20:47. Natalie Condon led the next pack, taking third place in 21:35.
Skaneateles didn’t get away until its third, fourth and fifth runners crossed the finish line. Hope Cross-Jay, in a time of 23:29, was inches ahead of Elyse Osum (23:30) as Nicole DeRosa finished in 24:10.
It proved a split on the boys side, with Skaneateles easily handling Solvay 15-47, but taking a 20-39 defeat to Hannibal. Still, the Lakers’ Luke Rathgeb won a thrilling individual duel with the Warriors’ Ben Dennison, Rathgeb prevailing in 16:36, two seconds ahead of Dennison.
Hannibal (no. 18 in the state Class C rankings) then had its next five runners trail Dennison, with Patrick Hall (17:14) at the forefront in third place, before the Lakers’ Tyler Lewis finished eighth in 18:21. Joe Norris was ninth in 18:33 as Caleb Bender got 10th place in 18:41.
But the boys Lakers were just starting its work, for on Saturday it went to Proctor Park in Utica for the E.J. Herrmann Invitational and finished second out of 31 teams in Varsity Race 1 with 132 points, trailing only state Class D no. 1-ranked Beaver River, who won with 33 points.
Rathgeb was seventh in the individual race, posting a time of 17:33.6 as Beaver River’s Connor Demo (17:03.2) prevailed. Norris finished 27th, in 18:34.2, two spots ahead of Bender (18:35.5) in 29th place. Nate Azzam was 37th in 18:58.3 as Lewis got 46th place in 19:11 flat.
