CENTRAL NEW YORK – No one knows for sure what kind of conditions will face area high school cross country runners when they vie for Section III and state championship honors at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill in November.
What was certain, though, was that many of those sides would head to VVS this Saturday for an invitational meet after they all had taken part in league competition.
East Syracuse Minoa got the jump on everyone, enduring 90-plus degree temperatures last Wednesday for a dual meet against Central Square and nearly getting a sweep.
The boys Spartans won 20-43 by sweeping all eight spots in the order after Charles Raymond won for Central Square in 19 minutes, 28.5 seconds.
Joe Pedrosa-Garcia, second in 19:44.4, led that push, Brandon Cerlanek getting third (20:18.1) and Elijah Evelyn fourth in 20:23.3 as Tom Gallery (21:30. 8) and Brenden Zwiesler (21:44.9) rounded out the scoring grid ahead of Austin Gott (21:46.0), Aiden Ellinger (21:49.1) and Bryce Oviedo (22:18.5).
On the girls side, the Spartans lost a narrow 27-28 decision, with ESM seeing Rachael Burt and Jaelyn Jordan each finish in 22:34.4 to take the spots behind the Redhawks’ Kadence Williams, who won in 21:32 flat.
Two other Central Square runners crossed the line before Emily Clonan in seventh place (26:29) and Danika Besig (26:34) in eighth place, and the fifth Redhawks runner, Rachel Scharf, clinched it by going 26:51 to beat out the 27:10.7 from Kate Callahan.
Jamesville-DeWitt opened with both its boys and girls teams recording fourth-place finishes during last Saturday’s Cato-Meridian Invitational.
On the boys end, the Red Rams’ Ryan Carter finished ninth in 19:03.2, edging teammate Peter Drew (19:09.8) in 10th place as Paul Fischi was 12th in 19:13.4. The girls race saw J-D’s Meghana Reddy lead her side by finishing 14th in 23:05.2 as Rebecca Mendez Squier was 18th in 24:19.4.
