CENTRAL NEW YORK – Unlike many other years the Fayeteville-Manlius girls cross country team had to really sweat out taking the regular-season Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division regular-season championship.
With first place at stake Wednesday at Long Branch Park the Hornets pulled out close decisions over Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool, beating the Warriors 25-30 and the Northstars 24-31.
What keyed the outcome was F-M’s third and fourth runners, Evie Pinkerton and Jordan Giannetti, who both finished ahead of their Liverpool and C-NS counterparts, Pinkerton going 19 minutes 44.5 seconds and Giannetti 19:55.1.
Together they were seventh and eighth, respectively, supporting the win from Izzie Sullivan as her 18:02.5 was more than half a minute ahead of the Warriors’ Taylor Page (18:33.0), with Camille Ryan getting fourth place in 19:21.1 ahead of the second Northstars and Warriors finishers.
Ashlynn Yonge’s 20:28.4 was 14th overall, but enough to clinch the team victories as Catie Edwards posted 20:57.13 and Claire McDonald finished in 21:13.5.
Each of the boys races was close, too, but F-M lost to both C-NS (25-34) and Liverpool (26-32) despite a 1-2 individual finish as Will Ditre prevailed in 16:31.6 and Kevin Heller got to second in 16:47.5.
Between them, the Northstars and Warriors filled out the next 10 spots with their runners before Sam Beeman finished in 18:13.2. Alex Domaszczynski posted 18:27.4 and Ben Prendergast finished in 19:10.9 as Liverpool’s Josh Vang (17:07.4) and C-NS’s Rhett Andrews (17:13.2) led their respective sides.
Elsewhere, Jamesville-DeWitt took on SCAC Empire division leader Auburn and Oswego, and were able to split the girls race, beating the Buccaneers 18-50 while falling to the Maroons 17-42.
Emma Rukavena led J-D with a time of 20:51 and Rebecca Mendez Squier posted 21:24, behind an Auburn group led by Kyleen Brady, Mary Alice Pineau and Abby Ringwood each finishing in 20:18 and Nora Burrows going 20:19.
The boys Red Rams lost 16-42 to Auburn and 17-38 to Oswego with Peter Drew posting 18:04 that was eighth overall behind four Maroons runners led by Austin Ferrin (16:27) and a Bucs trio paced by Daniel Dunn’s 17:24.
Each of J-D’s teams took part in Saturday’s Whitesboro Invitational, with Rukavena making her way to fifth place in the girls race in a time of 21:42.2 as Carter led the boys Red Rams, getting to 13th place in 18:17.9.
