EAST SYRACUSE – What started on a Wednesday concluded two days later with East Syracuse Minoa and Jamesville-DeWitt both earning Section III Class A track and field championships.
The boys Spartans were victorious by the smallest possible margin, edging Auburn 104 points to 103, while the girls Red Rams picked up 119 points for its title ahead of the Maroons’ 91 as ESM was third with 81 points.
J-D and ESM both had standout performances on the girls side as Victoria Payne swept three sprints for the Red Rams and Akuot Kuany three field events for the Spartans.
Payne beat Kuany, 14.99 seconds to 15.59 in the 100-meter hurdles, then went on to take the 100-meter dash in 12.70 seconds to edge the 12.77 of Oswego eighth-grader Sophia Otokiti.
Then Payne won a third time in the 200-meter dash, going 26.34 seconds to Nicki Militi’s second-place 26.73. They joined Ellyana Deng, and Amariyah McClinton for second in the 4×100 relay in 50.95 to ESM’s third-place 51.90 from Naomi Benjamin, Sophia Brooks, Amber Hayes and Madelyn Copp.
Kuany got first in the high jump by clearing 5’4″ with fewer misses than Nottingham’s Miyanah Robinson, then won the long jump with 17’7″, more than a foot and a half clear of her rivals as Deng (15’3″) was sixth. Finally, in the triple jump Kuany had a top leap of 38’1 1/2″, nearly five feet clear of anyone else, with the Spartans’ Aniyah Jones (32’8 1/2″) fourth and Deng (32’8″) fifth.
Skylar Vaught unleashed a discus throw of 123’1″ for the Rams, more than 21 feet ahead of the field as Kenna Ridzi was third with 95’8 and won the shot put, her toss of 34’2″ ahead of a field that included Vaught (31’4 1/4″) in third place.
Militi won, too, her 400-meter dash of 58.23 seconds the only time under one minute as Indian River’s Jaida Thorpe (1:00.81) was second. In the 400 hurdles, Mary Jane Scott got second place in 1:09.96 and McClinton was fifth in 1:15.05 behind Hayes’ fourth-place 1:15 flat.
Meghana Reddy added a third in the 800-meter run in 2:30.66 and, with Scott, Abi Adams and Rebecca Mendez Squier, got to second in the 4×800 relay in 10:44.36.
ESM’s Elise Mancini, topping 8 feet, was second in the pole vault, with J-D’s Kaitlyn Cohen fourth. Ayok Kuany was fourth (1,839 points) and Madison Markins fifth (1,388 points) for ESM in the pentathlon.
Rachael Burt got fourth in the 3,000-meter run in 11:24.73, while Leah Rehm was fourth in the 2,000 steeplechase in 8:22.22. Jaelyn Jordan added a sixth in the 1,600-meter run in 5:17.52 and the Spartans were fourth in the 4×800 relay in 4:23.85.
Keying ESM’s boys win, Jay-Neil McDuffie went 14.83 seconds in the 110 high hurdles, more than a second ahead of the field, while Ryan Sullivan went 44’7″ to hold off PSLA-Fowler’s Musa Dadiri (44’2 1/2″) in the triple jump and cleared 6 feet 4 inches in the high jump to match Corcoran’s Abdi Gosar, adding a fourth in the 110 hurdles.
McDuffie also beat the field in the long jump, going 21’8 1/4″, and added a third in the 100-meter dash in 11.23 seconds, edging Mikah Combs (11.30) in fourth place. In the 4×100, McDuffie and Combs joined Hashim Abdi and Anthony Bryant to go 42.89 and pull away from Auburn (44.02) as Combs went 23.01 in the 200 for fourth place.
A closely fought pentathlon had ESM’s Tyler Quarry, with 2,594 points, prevail over the 2,383 from J-D’s Jaden Addai. Joe Pedrosa-Garcia was second (59.80 seconds) to Oswego’s Adam Jaskula (59.11) in the 400 hurdles, while Charlie English topped 12 feet for fourth place in the pole vault.
J-D’s boys were fourth with 51.5 points, led by Kevin Vigneault, whose 47’10 1/2″ in the shot put beat the 44’5″ from ESM’s Andrew LaMarche in second place as he also finished third in the discus with 138’11”, where the Spartans’ K’Mari Jones (133’3″) was fifth.
Peter Drew, Hudson Groat, Brian Durkin and Ryan Carter were third in the 4×800 relay in 8:45.55, just ahead of the 8:46.22 from ESM’s quartet of Pedrosa-Garcia, Seamus DeSandre, Brandon Cerlanek and Austin Gott.
Brayden Rivera went 51.21 in the 400 sprint to finish fourth and Groat was fifth in the 800 in 2:03.26, while Darien Hunter was sixth in the 110 hurdles in 16.44 seconds, with the Rams third in the 4×400 in 3:34.71 and fifth in the 4×100 in 45.28 seconds. Amar Lopez went 43’3″ for fourth place in the triple jump and Terrell Willis topped 5’8″ for fifth place in the high jump.
