While many area high school athletes rested or scaled back during the April school recess, the Jamesville-DeWitt boys and girls track and field teams did not.
Just three days after a strong showing at the April 21 Square Deal Invitational in Johnson City, the Red Rams went to the Westhill Spring Break Invitational and won big on both the boys and girls sides as East Syracuse Minoa and Bishop Grimes also took part and won various field events.
Alexandria Payne won three times for the J-D girls. Payne swept the sprints, starting with the 100-meter dash where, in 13.01 seconds, she edged Institute of Technology Central’s Fannie Kumeh (13.02) by one-hundredth of a second. ESM had Sophie Hartz and Lashae Benjamin finish 11th and 13th, respectively.
The 200-meter dash had a bit larger margin of victory for Payne, whose time of 26.37 seconds easily cleared Phoenix’s Gianna DeRoberts (26.77) and the field. Benjamin finished 12th for the Spartans.
Finally, in the long jump, Payne unleashed a leap of 18 feet 1 inch, well clear of a field that included ESM’s Mia Montgomery, who was fourth with 15’5” as fellow Spartan Sophie Hartz was sixth with 15’3”.
However, Montgomery did prevail in the triple jump, her leap of 35’11” well clear of Faith Heritage’s Jasmine DePalmo (32’4”) in second place as J-D’s Allison Virgo was third with 32”3” and Hartz finished ninth for the Spartans.
J-D’s Laetticia Bazile was second in the high jump, clearing 5 feet, the same as Skaneateles’ Mia Grasso, but Grasso had fewer misses so she took the top spot as ESM’s Jennah Ferrari was fourth, topping 4’10”. Eva Wisniewski cleared 7’6” for fifth place in the pole vault.
Grace Bridge got third place in the 800 in 2:32.59. Payne, Ailish McDevitt and Monica Hernandez-Olivera went 53.23 seconds in the 3×100 hurdles shuttle relay, second only to Westhill (52.03 seconds). Ayla Erwin was 10th and Abby Leavitt 11th in the 1,500-meter run.
ESM was fifth in the 4×400 relay as Mackenzie Bourdon, Kassandra Burr, Melanie DeFeo and Kat Boland posted a time of 4:33.41, well ahead of J-D in 10th place. Sara Bourdon was 10th in the girls shot put and 15th in the discus.
On the boys side, J-D’s David Fikhman came within inches of sweeping the two sprints. He won the 200 in 22.28 seconds, just ahead of Westhill’s Tom Howard (22.53) in the runner-up spot.
But in the 100, Fikhman finished just behind Howard, 11.277 seconds to Howard’s 11.273, while Haberle Conlon took 11th place to go with his 10th-place showing in the 200.
Bishop Grimes’ Nate Gay was victorious in the high jump, clearing 6 feet with fewer misses than Jordan-Elbridge’s Jeremiah Sparks.
In the 3×110 hurdles shuttle relay, J-D’s trio of Markos Petkopoulos, Alex Carbacio and Jack Underhill, their three times of 52.69 seconds topping Carthage (53.58) and the rest of the field.
Murad Amurlayev went 21 feet in the long jump, second only to Weedsport’s Riley Spingler, who won with 21’3”. Fidel Martinez was third in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 11:27.05, while Alan Gao was seventh in the mile in 4:53.67, and also 11th in the 800-meter run as Josh Hillers finished 10th.
