We’re getting back into the swing of indoor track meets again with our second meet of the year. Attendance was up, with 145 runners, including 7 teams, who completed a total of 338 efforts. Although we didn’t have a professional photographer at this meet, several people have uploaded their photos already, and if you took some, we’d love to see them too. It’s really easy to upload to the public album—give it a try! Scroll down below the write-up for full results.

Although the 5000m race, our first event, didn’t compare in size to our February 2020 meet, when we had 86 registrants and 71 finishers across 3 heats, we still ended up with 24 runners, enough for a box start to separate the crowd. Lucas Baker took the lead in the 25-lap race early and kept it all the way to the finish in a solid 16:39, holding off Jordan Varano in 17:04. Liz Hartman won for the women in a personal best of 20:16, ahead of Olivia Zeigler of Northwestern Elementary School in 21:32.

Moving from longest to shortest, we switched gears for the 60m sprints, where we had 10 heats. In the final heat, Braddock Salisbury ran 7.28 seconds for the win, edging out Noah Bosket in 7.53 and Karim Nimaga of Morrisville State College in 7.58. Matti Johnston of Corning was the fastest woman in 8.39 seconds, followed by Madelyn Weeks of the Groton Project Track Club in 9.60 seconds.

The mile was our most popular race of the day, with 62 finishers across 5 heats. After top seed Lucas Baker scratched, the race became incredibly tight, with a five-man pack running close together the entire race. Charles McCurdy stayed at the head of the pack for the win in 4:49, holding off the hard-charging Dan Timmerman in 4:50 and Scott Weeks of the Groton Project in 4:51. Our first woman was Heather Webster of GVH, who ran a strong 5:49, and Olivia Zeigler of Northwestern Elementary claimed her second silver of the day in 6:07, just ahead of Abigail Wagner of the SOAR Running Club in 6:13.

Our final individual event was the 200m, where Zuri Ruffin took the win in a blistering 23.85, outpacing Corning’s Brady Hughes in 24.57. Mattison Lucey of the Groton Project repeated her January win, breaking the tape in 27.91, which was 0.6 seconds faster than last month. This time, however, she had close competition with Matti Johnston of Corning just a half-second behind in 28.43.

Throughout the meet, Brett Shelton and Steve Wagner of the SOAR Running Club managed the high jump and long jump. Those events proved popular again, particularly with the GIAC Navigators and SOAR Running Club kids—33 competed in the high jump and 43 in the long jump. In the high jump, Noah Ruffer cleared 6 feet for the win, with Connor Trimber, Brady Hughes, and Matthew Gonzalez tying for second with jumps of 5 feet, 6 inches. Matti Johnston of Corning was the top woman with a jump of 4 feet, 10 inches, and Molly Doran of SOAR was second with 3 feet, 6 inches. In the long jump, Noah Ruffer took home another win by leaping 19 feet, 2.75 inches, ahead of Connor Trimber’s second-place jump of 17 feet, 8.75 inches. Tess Eisner won for the women with a jump of 17 feet 3.75 inches, with Samantha Oakes second thanks to a 14-foot, 4-inch leap.

The final event of the day was the 4x200m relay, where 15 teams ran across three heats. Only three teams broke 2:00 this month—some of the Ithaca High sprinters from last month were volunteering at this meet—with the win going to Morrisville State College in 1:45, just ahead of an unattached team in 1:47 and a High Noon & Friends team in 1:59.

As always, the meet was made possible by the highly amiable and capable efforts of 28 members of our track volunteer team. Ronke Ilegbusi and Crosby Woods showed up early to help us set up. Carl Franck once again served as head timer and master of the PA system, Tom Rishel helped train David Rossiter as starter, and Patrick Boyle and Heather Cobb kept everyone lining up on schedule. Jesse Koenecke managed Meet Manager with help from Ronke Ilegbusi and Moss Dengler. Tonya Engst and Rebecca Lambert held down the bib pickup table, recruited for the relays, and answered runner questions. Molly Doruska recorded bibs for the longer races with help from Kaleb Smith, Katie Gannon handled backup timing, and Izzy Silbert counted laps, and they teamed with Amalia Skilton, Sandy Gregorich, Anne Shakespeare, Ayoub Oulida, Diana Hackett, Max Sheehan, and Clara Bennett to time the sprints. Bethany Schiller and Aya Oulida assisted Brett Shelton with the long jump, and Elodie Fey helped Steve Wagner with the high jump. Special thanks to Brett and Steve of the SOAR Running Club for making the jumps possible!

See you again on March 12!