STATEN ISLAND – A large contingent of Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool indoor track and field athletes brought big ambitions to Staten Island for Saturday’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships.
And no one did better than C-NS freshman Anna Eells, who was entered in three events – the 55-meter hurdles, high jump and triple jump – and managed to earn medals in two of them.
In the triple jump, Eells’ 38 feet 1 inch on her second attempt put her on the podium in fourth place overall. Webster Schroeder’s Corintia Griffith emerged as the state champion, going 40’3 3/4”.
Eells went 8.46 seconds in the 55 hurdles to get to the finals where, in 8.49 seconds, she claimed seventh place behind the winning 8.21 from Uniondale’s Chica Akazi. In the high jump, Eells could only manage a clearance of 5 feet.
Jaydin Mackey, Grace Murray, Marissa Doty and Sophia Graham would medal in the 4×400 relay, qualifying second for the finals in a swift 3:57.82, more than three seconds quicker than it had done in the regular season, though it would dip to 4:02.40 in the finals, they still finished sixth overall as Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake won in 3:54.78.
C-NS had set a Section III record in the girls 4×200 relay thanks to Mackey, Murray, Grace and Stephanie Todd, and it would break that mark again by going 1:43.77, fifth-fastest among qualifiers, before taking sixth in the finals in 1:46.55.
In the boys NYSPHSAA meet, C-NS had Joe Main, in the shot put, throw it 51’8 3/4”to finish eighth overall and seventh in the public-school division to reach the podium.
Mackey, on her own in the 55-meter dash, went 7.26 seconds to finish ninth, just three-hundredths of a second from reaching the finalsa, while Morgan Hayes, looking to improve on 17’11 3/4” in the long jump, had a best leap of 17’2” for 11th place. Sophia Graham was 27th in the 600-meter run in 1:40.01.
Liverpool would have Taylor Page run at 1,000 meters and Mia Wright go in the 300-meter dash, with Wright, Nahla Battle-Crenshaw, Maddie Devendorf and Mikayla Greene going in the 4×200 and rising all the way to 10th place in 1:44.58.
Page’s 2:59.62 again broke the three-minute mark and nearly equaled her 2:58.69 from the season as she finished 14th, while Wright was 27th in the 300 in 42.35 seconds.
Davine Bennett was in the boys 55-meter dash, where he went 6.71 seconds for 27th place, while Liverpool’s lone boys representative, Ny’Quez Madison, was in the triple jump, where he had a top attempt of 42’9” to finish 14th after going 44’6 1/4” during the season.
