From heavy rain early to breaks of sunshine later, runners who competed at last Saturday’s Section III cross country championships dealt with various types of conditions.
What they all had to face, though, was the same 3.1-mile course at Chittenango High School that served as the host venue for the sectional meet.
Rain throughout the week had closed the course to practice, and then more rain fell on Saturday morning, adding more mud to a course that already had plenty on hand.
By the time they ran the girls sectional Class B event, it was already tough, but the hosts from Chittenango dealt with it well, finishing fifth out of 13 teams with 140 points as Christian Brothers Academy (35 points) held off Camden (40 points) for the top spot.
Individually, McKenzie Dombroski led the Bears, the senior finishing 18th in 24 minutes, 6.1 seconds, less than two seconds ahead of freshman teammate McKayla Capeling, who was 19th in 24:07.7.
Junior Chelsea Lamphere needed 25:05.5 to finish 31st in the team standings, just ahead of sophomore Piper Beckwith in 36th place (25:24.5) as another 10th grader, Kiara Waite, was 38th in 25:25.4. Senior Jada Sowich (26:30.1) and sophomore Lailah Emad (27:30.2) trailed them.
Moving to the boys sectional Class B meet, Chittenango was sixth out of 14 teams, earning 160 points as Jamesville-DeWitt (52 points) easily claimed the team title.
The big story here was seeing two Bears seniors, Ersilio Cerminaro and Dave Gratien, nearly advance to this weekend’s state meet at Sunken Meadow Park on Long Island.
Cerminaro finished eighth in 19:12.1, with Gratien getting ninth place in 19:27.8. The top five individuals outside of J-D made it to the state meet and Cerminaro was two places, and less than six seconds, behind that qualifying mark of 19:06.9 set by Homer’s Teddy Mercer.
Elsewhere for Chittenango, senior Dylan Price finished 44th in the team standings in 21:32.4, one placement ahead of junior Nate Lampman (21:34.5) as senior Devlin Cameron was 54th in 21:56.4, with sophomore Tristan LaFountaine posting 22:14.5 and fellow sophomore David Seale finishing in 22:23.3.
Cazenovia saw its boys cross country team finish sixth in the sectional Class C-1 meet and ninth overall in Class C as Westhill held off Skaneateles for the team title.
Sophomore Jared Smith led the Lakers, getting to 16th place in the C-1 standings and 26th overall in a clocking of 20:32 flat.
Noah DeRochie, a senior, was 42nd in the overall Class C race in 21:14.8. Jacob Buckley, in 21:57.9, was less than a second ahead of Stan Angus (21:58.7) as Hunter McCullough (22:22.8), Jacob Ives (22:30.4) and Zach Wendel (22:33.6) followed.
