Tompkins Weekly

Bobcats edge Blue Raiders for Section Title



The Lansing Bobcats and the Trumansburg Blue Raiders girl’s track and field teams traded positions throughout the meet before the Bobcats edged the Blue Raiders for the Section IV Class C team championship in the sectional meet last Wednesday.

The two sides are the only two programs to eclipse the 100 team-point mark on the way to capturing the top two spots ahead of the 14-team field.
The girl’s 100 meters saw 18 points go the way of Trumansburg, as Finley Edmonds (12.72) finished ahead of teammate Glenn Parker (13.02) to take the top honors in the finals of the event.

Edmonds would continue her speedy start, pacing the field for another 10 points, this time winning the 200-meter dash in 27.05 seconds, winning the event by just under half a second.

The early points continued to pile up for the Trumansburg girls as Emma and Gracie Wright took the top two spots in the 400-meter, firmly asserting the Blue Raiders’ dominance in the short-distance events.

The middle distances opened the door for Lansing to make up some ground on the Blue Raiders, as Bobcats teammates Catie Eisenhut and Eden Jackson finished fourth and fifth, respectively, in the 800-meters, with Eisenhut edging out Jackson by 0.27 of a second.

Eisenhut blazed her way for 10 points in her next event, the 1500-meter, outrunning the competition by eight seconds, claiming top honors.

In the 100 meter hurdles, the Bobcats and the Blue Raiders fought head-to-head, with a pair of Lansing runners, Ellie Howell (16.54) and Catalina Zaloj (16.60), taking the top two spot away from the pair of Blue Raiders, Hailey Chaney (17.93) and Isabel Morse (18.05), that finished in third and fourth place.
Zaloj would best her second-place finish in the 100-meter hurdle with a first-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles, an event in which the Blue Raiders did not place. This opened a 14-point advantage for the Bobcats, as Hana Thibault earned Lansing an additional four points for her fourth-place finish.

In the 2,000 meter steeplechase final individual running event, Lansing tripled the score that Trumansburg received, two points from Alex Zoner’s fifth-place finish, with six points from Kinsley Jacobs’ third-place finish in the event.
Through the individual track events, the Blue Raiders led the Bobcats by a two-point margin, amassing 60 points to the 58 accumulated by the Bobcats.

Trumansburg would grow its lead to 12, as its 4×100 meter relay team finished nearly two seconds ahead of Chenango Valley for first-place in an event that was not contested by Lansing.

As they did in the individual races, the Blue Raiders dominated the short relays, winning the 4×400 meters, as well. Lansing, finishing in fourth, kept Trumansburg from pulling too far ahead, before striking back in an eight-point shutout of the Blue Raiders, with a second-place finish in the 4×800 meters.
With the tally from all of the track events showing an 80-70 Trumansburg lead for the top spot in the team race, Lansing turned to its field athletes to make up the ground.

The Bobcats would turn to their team’s leading scorer, Zaloj, to take the reins in the field events, and she found her groove, earning 10 points for a first-place finish in the high jump. Zaloj tied for the top height in the event, 5-00.00, but won based on the fewest number of attempts. Faith Flood would earn Trumansburg four points for her fourth-place finish.

Flood would team up with Isabel and Rosie Morse to earn the Blue Raiders seven points in the pole vault, but it would be no match for the one-two finish of Lansing’s Gwen Gisler (11-00.00) and Kiara Tornusciolo (10-06.00), earning the Bobcats 18 points.

Gisler would outjump Rosie Morse for second in the long jump, securing the eight points over Morse’s six.

Lansing would get four additional points in the final jumping event, the triple jump, as Howell (34-05.75) jumped her way to fourth place.

The throwing events saw only one competitor, between the two schools, find a scoring position, as Trumansburg’s Maddy Brainard (84-01) tallied four points in a fourth-place finish.

The field events would prove the deciding factor, as Lansing outscored Trumansburg 40-21 off the track to take home the 110-101 win in the team race. The next closest team to the top pair was Newark Valley, which came in third with 83 points.

After the sectional meet, there is very little doubt that Tompkins County girl’s track and field is dominated by a blue and gold color scheme, and when the dust settled, it was the blue and gold of Lansing that reigned supreme in the county and in Section IV.

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