CENTRAL NEW YORK – Two regular-season champions in the Salt City Athletic Conference met one another last Wednesday and Fayetteville-Manlius would not get the best of it.
Auburn prevailed, including a close girls race where the Maroons edged the Hornets 27-29 with posting the top three times behind Izzie Sullivan’s winning 18 minutes, 22.1 seconds.
Though Camille Ryan finished in 19:47.8 and Jordan Giannetti posted 20:07 flat they were behind the Auburn trio of Kyleen Brady (18:56.3), Mary Alice Pineau (19:26.2) and Abby Ringwood (19:37.4).
Then Nora Burrows finished sixth for the Maroons in 20:25.2 and Vienna Ritter-Yelle (21:56.8) took 10th place to clinch it, negating the F-M efforts of Claire McDonald (20:32.0), Evie Pinkerton (21:08.5) and Ashlynn Yonge (21:19.9) in the seventh through ninth spots.
The boys race was more lopsided in Auburn’s favor, the Maroons prevailing 20-35 with a 1-2 finish by Austin Ferrin (16:28.0) and Owen Gasper (16:33.7) well ahead of Will Ditre’s third-place 16:57.6 for the Hornets.
Kevin Heller finished fifth in 17:33.4, but F-M’s third runner didn’t cross the line until Eliot ElBayadi did so in eighth place in 19:00.9. Ben Prendergast and Sam Beeman both finished in 19:02.1 to get into the top 10.
Just two days later, F-M raced in the Chittenango Twilight Invitational and swept the individual races, Ditre taking the boys title in 16:47.6, the only time under 17 minutes, and Sullivan winning the girls race in 18:54.9, nearly a full minute ahead of the field.
The Hornets also took the girls team title with 24 points to runner-up Cicero-North Syracuse’s 33, with Ryan’s third-place 20:17.5 beating out the best Northstars time of 20:19 flat from Katy Harbold. Giannetti was sixth (20:36.4) and McDonald seventh (20:47.1) as Pinkerton’s 12th-place 21:13.3 clinched the team victory.
Despite Ditre’s win and Heller taking fourth in 17:34.6 the boys Hornets were second (75 points) to C-NS (49), who had all five of its runners beat out the third-fastest F-M time of 18:59.9 from Freddy Hunt as Beeman posted 19:16.8.
Having completed all of their SCAC Empire division meets Jamesville-DeWitt faced Baldwinsville, and the boys Red Rams were able to prevail 24-31 as the girls lost 26-32 despite sweeping the top two individual spots.
Taking full advantage of B’ville resting some of its top runners, the J-D boys had Ryan Carter win in 17:14 over the 17:36 posted by the Bees’ Angelo Sawyers.
Peter Drew finished third in 18:16, with Paul Fischi fifth in 18:56. Zach Lapidus secured the team victory when he ran to sixth place in 18:59.
Meanwhile, in the girls race J-D’s Rebecca Mendez Squier prevailed in 20:38, just ahead of Emma Rukavena’s second-place 20:44, but B’ville grabbed the next four spots before Lucia Brown took seventh in 23:43. Gretchen Kirch added a ninth-place clocking of 24:02.
