Wildcat Invitational

On Saturday, September 20th the Boys and Girls Cross Country teams traveled to the highly competetive Wildcat Invitational at Marcus Whitman. The race featured teams from across Section Five and the rest of New York State. This is the site for the Sectional Championships in November, as well as the State Championships, so most every team in the area competed there. Coach Jay Laitenberger said "this is a hard course and each runner really needs to follow the game plan to have success on it. We have had a lot of good races here in the past, but never this many in one day."

In the Varsity Girls' race Janessa Shearer won a medal by finishing 22nd overall and her 23:22 time places her in 7th place on the top all time Le Roy girls at the Marcus Whitman course. At the one mile marker Janessa was in 52nd place and continued to move through the pack to pick off half of the girls in front of her. Janessa's time was 2 minutes faster than Crystal Northrup, last year's MVP and League All Star, ran at the Wildcat Invitational in 2002. Also scoring for Le Roy were Chelsea Baker, Christina Malley, Corrie Doeller, and Becky Wetzel. The girls' team finished 11th out of the 28 teams that stood on the starting line.

In the Varsity Boys' race, Jake Sullivan also medaled with his 23rd place finish out of the more than 130 runners. His time would have placed him side by side with last years MVP and League All Star Calvin Harding's 2002 Wildcat Invitational time. Much like Janessa, Jake was in the mid 50's at the mile marker and followed the game plan perfectly to pick off a lot of runners over the final 2 miles. Sophomore Josh Lang dropped over a minute compared to last year on the same course. Andy Judge ran the greuling race while ill and managed to drop over 3 minutes from his time last year. However, the largest improvement from last year's race was seen in Jim Schwab's 4 minute improvement. Also scoring for Le Roy was junior captain Riley Carhart who said "the boys' team might be young, but we are holding our own in these big races." The boys' team finished 13th out of the 26 teams that began the race.

Several JV runners also had excellent performances in the JV races. Sarah Wetzel finished 28th, Allyce Barron finished 33rd, Rachel Kleinow finished 35th and Aimee Lewis finished 37th in the girls' JV race. In the boys' JV race, Dan Washburn followed the game plan set by varsity runners and picked off 21 runners in the final 2 miles to finish 34th. Derek Tesch and Charlie Hayward finished 54th and 39th respectively.