All through September and October, the Baldwinsville cross country teams are hosting a series of big races.
It began Sept. 11, when Cicero-North Syracuse and West Genesee visited for a three-team SCAC Metro division meet, and continued 10 days later with the 68th edition of the Baldwinsville Invitational.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the Bees would host another three-team classic last Wednesday involving the area’s top Class A powers, Fayetteville-Manlius and Liverpool, who were dueling for the boys and girls regular-season league titles.
B’ville wasn’t a spectator to all this on the boys side, staying even with Liverpool even as it took a 19-42 defeat to F-M, who again sits atop the state Class A rankings.
The Hornets swept the top three thanks to Geoff Howles, Peyton Geehrer (both finishing in 15:43) and Sam Otis (15:57), with two Warriors runners that followed before Colin Delaney got sixth place for the Bees in 16 minutes, 37 seconds, just ahead of Jack Michaels, who was sixth in 16:40.
It was different in the girls race, where B’ville lost 15-50 to both F-M and Liverpool, and the individual battle saw the Hornets’ Claire Walters, in 17:28, edge the Warriors’ Jenna Schulz (17:38) for top honors.
All of these teams that have visited B’ville in the regular season will do so again Oct. 16 for the SCAC championships. In the meantime, the Bees would run in three consecutive large-scale Saturday meets.
The first of these was last Saturday’s McQuaid Invitational in Rochester. Competing in the Varsity AAA division for large schools, the B’ville boys had the best finish among Section III teams.
Earning 257 points, the Bees were seventh in the 18-team field, three points ahead of Liverpool (260 points) in eighth place. In particular, Michaels had a sensational race, his time of 15:33.2 on the Genesee Valley Park course putting him fifth among team runners and sixth overall, not far from the winning 15:21.1 from Frontier’s Josh Peron.
Delaney was 31st in the team race and 32nd overall in 16:05.7. James Cary got 67th place in 16:53.5, three spots ahead of Solomon Holden-Betts (16:57.1) as Eric Smith was 84th in 17:19.3, followed by Tom Hagopian (17:42.9) and Justin Chimento (17:49.1).
The B’ville girls were in the Varsity Unseeded AA-2 race at McQuaid, where it finished 17th out of 37 entrants.
Vivian Holden-Betts had the best time of 21:08.7, putting her in 83rd place, nine spots ahead of the 21:14.8 from Sage Springsteen. Sarah Fawwaz was 96th in 21:18.2 ahead of Anna Conklin (21:41.7), Margaret Solomon (21:57.7), Olivia Creelman (22:32.2) and Annabelle Horan, who posted 22:42.4.
