Around the League

The craziness continues at work, so this has been sitting unfinished for a few days...

Last Tuesday marked the final league meet date of the 2010 season, and there was certainly some excitement to be had.

Mendon East

A week ago, Shaylyn Tuite had run a very fast time on this course, beating her own best league meet time on the course (from 8th grade) by 36 seconds in becoming the first girl to break 19 minutes in a league meet, since the leader board started in 2005. This week she brought things to a new level, running 18:03, which tops even the best Monroe County Championship time recorded (18:06.8 by Hilton's Amanda Griggs in 2005). The R-H girls looked good, comfortably defeating Sutherland, 18-37.

The R-H boys won easily over Sutherland, although judging by their spread (and no Mickey Burke), they were not going all out across the board. Sutherland's tight spread (just 31 seconds!) proved to be too much for Mendon, 23-32.

Mendon West

The Victor girls ended any suspense by finishing 1-2-3 over Brighton, so Brighton's 54-second gap was not going to save them.

MJ Erb took the day off and Victor's 4-5 runners were no match for Brighton's 3-7 pack as Brighton rolled, 21-40. Athena had made an appearance in the Class A state rankings, but even without Erb, Victor defeated them, 19-40.

Parma Park

The highlighted matchup here were the Fairport girls vs. Canandaigua, with the Division 1 title on the line. Meghan McCormick led Canandaigua with the win in a "course record" 19:03, running 13 seconds faster than Leila Mantilla's time from a month ago. But Fairport took 2-3-5-6 to secure the win, even though their 5th girl was over 2 minutes back. Fairport's 27-29 win gives them the Division crown.

The Brockport boys went 1-2-3, as expected and their 5th man, a 9th grader was only 1:26 back, so they are suddenly a much better team. Odyssey just jogged thru the race.

Seneca Park

Sadly, Leila Mantilla did not run this race for Penfield, so what could have been a very exciting match-up with HF-L, turned in to a 23-32 win for HF-L.

Things were more interesting on the Boys side. Irondequoit did not run their best, so HF-L was able to sweep with wins over Irondequoit (26-31) and Penfield (26-30). Penfield's 2-6 pack (only 1 senior) was just a little too far back and they lost to Irondequoit, 26-31.

Webster Park

Both the girls and boys races seemed to be capable of generating some excitement as Hilton, Thomas and Schroeder all seemed to be fairly closely matched.

The girls all came ready to race. A large group of girls followed Val and Amanda up the hill after the bridge during the first mile. Over the course of the race, the lead group gradually dwindled - Thomas falling off first, with Val and Amanda running the last mile in just over 6 minutes and pulling away from the Hilton girls. Annelise gradually passed the top 4 Thomas girls, to secure the win over Thomas, and momentarily caught the 4th Hilton girl, which could have kept Schroeder's hopes alive; however, Hilton ultimately placed 7 runners ahead of Schroeder's 5th and prevailed, 27-30.

While the Hilton girls came to race, the Hilton boys did not. They were content to run through this one, coming off their trip to Saratoga last weekend, and facing a couple of tough non-division opponents. That left the meet as a simple dual meet featuring Thomas and Schroeder in a battle for the Division title. Jared, Thomas's top runner looked ill early on and finished back in the pack. Coupled with excellent races by Justin, Will and Joe, that led to a 22-33 win for Schroeder.