ONONDAGA COUNTY – Again plunging into Salt City Athletic Conference competition, each of the West Genesee cross country teams faced an enormous challenge last Wednesday at Camillus Middle School.
Baldwinsville (on the boys side) and Fayetteville-Manlius (on the girls side) both brought league favorites who performed that way, leaving the Wildcats settling for 0-2 league marks.
WG’s boys were close against F-M, taking a 25-30 loss, though was further back from B’ville’s 16-47 decision as David Petrus had the best individual race, his time of 18:26.3 seventh overall.
F-M’s Will Ditre won in 16:56.2, nearly a full minute ahead of the field, and B’ville then grabbed seven of the next nine finishing spots, all ahead of Sean Moser, whose 14th-place 19:23.1 was just ahead of Mason Doran (19:27.1) and Archer Macholl (19:27.9) as Dillan Holzwarth (19:38) finished 18th.
On the girls side, WG lost 17-41 to B’ville and 15-46 to F-M, who swept the top two individual spots, Izzie Sullivan winning in a swift 19:02.3 and Jordan Giannetti second in 19:56.5.
Among the Wildcats’ runners, Rebecca Dickey did best, getting to 10th place in a clocking of 21:53.2, just beating out Thalie Petrie, who was 11th in 22:05.7. Lily Pellegrino, in 22:50.4, was ahead of Claire Griffin’s 22:51.9 and Harper Flynn’s 23:11 flat.
Though most of the area’s OHSL teams wait for league meets to start this week, Westhill ran last Saturday in the East Syracuse Minoa Invitational where it finished third in the boys division with 110 points behind F-M and Mexico.
Edward Popp, with a sixth-place time of 17:37.1, led a Warriors side where Chris Gilkes finished 22nd among team runners in 19:22.4. Alex Tryska posted 19:31.7 for 29th place overall just ahead of Solvay runner Max Overend, who finished in 19:48.4.
The girls race at ESM had Westhill get fifth place in a 10-team field, with freshman Sabine Napolitano running quite well as she got 15th place overall (14th among team runners) in 22:09.6, followed by teammates Reagan Wright (24:58.6) and Addie Alberts, who posted 25:52.3.
