Another indoor track and field season for area athletes culminated with last Saturday’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships on Staten Island.
Once again, the state meet took place at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex, where three area high schools had athletes in the field.
And it was Westhill’s Angie Mesa stepping up to earn a state title as a member of Section III’s winning distance medley relay team.
Mesa ran the second leg of the race after South Lewis’ Lexi Bernard opened. Then Central Valley Academy’s Camryn Stone took the third leg and Cicero-North Syracuse’s Kate Putman took the honors in the anchor leg.
In a time of 10 minutes, 17.68 seconds, the Section III quartet pulled away from Section I’s second-place 10:21.94, a margin of more than four seconds.
Caleb Bender, already a state champion in cross country, sought more honors for Skaneateles in the boys 1,600-meter run.
The Lakers junior, who posted 4:26.33 in the 1,600 this winter, Bender improved to 4:24.52 here to finish inside the top 10 among NYSPHSAA runners and 11th overall. Iona Prep’s Pedro Bravo won the race in 4:14.40.
Over in the boys 4×800 relay, Westhill had its quartet of Jacob Fricano, Brandon Mulholland, Brian Kenny and Mike Ferrara look to improve upon 8:20.06.
It didn’t quite happen, but the Warriors did finish 14th in 8:25.04. To show the quality of the field, Syosset lay claim to the state and Federation titles with a winning 7:55.53.
West Genesee had its lone representative at the state meet, Matt Bartolotta, run in the boys distance medley relay with Liverpool’s Carter Rodriguez, Oswego’s Benjamin Lewis and Utica Proctor’s Haris Brankovic.
Together, Bartolotta and his teammates finished in 9:09.08 for eighth place, its time exactly matching that of Section IX. The Catholic High School Athletic Association won the Federation event in 8:55.41 and the public-school portion went to Section VIII (Long Island, Nassau County) in 8:56.79.
