Oswego Harrier

September 11, 2006                                                                                                                                                                 Edition No. 2

The Eagle Harrier

Donohue, Direnzo, Griffin

Pace Eagles

Jordan-Elbridge Takes 4^th at Oswego Invite

Oswego, New York – The harriers of Jordan-Elbridge began their season Saturday, and found the competition to be fierce and the losses due to graduation even tougher as the Eagles finished in the middle of the pack.  Jordan-Elbridge took a disappointing fourth place out of 8 scoring squads at the Oswego Invite, the race that they totally dominated in 2005.  “We are a different team with a four new scorers” said J-E Coach Roman, “we’re going to go through some growing pains”. 

     The race was won by the State’s number one team in Class C, Tully High School, who effectively shut out the entire field by taking the first five places in the race.  In fact, the Tully boys were so unchallenged, that their first five runners crossed the finish line in a tie, all with the same time of 13.08.  Taking the first five positions in an invitational is quite rare, but not unheard of as Fayetteville-Manlius did this several times in 2005.  F-M went on to win the State and Federation Cross Country Titles.  Tully looks capable of pulling off a state championship with this talented crew of runners.

     Lumped together were the next three squads.  Regional rival Weedsport was second with 76 points, followed by Phoenix H.S. with 93 points and then J-E with 97 points.  Pulaski, APW, Cato, and Hannibal High Schools trailed the Eagles by a wide margin.  “I think with a couple of weeks of hard training and some good effort, we will be capable of closing the gap on Weedsport, but they returned practically their whole team, and we graduated plenty” said J-E Coach Roman.

     The Eagles were led by their trio of high flying juniors, Jeff Donohue, Donato Direnzo, and Jake Griffin.  All three were in the top eighteen of the race.  Donohue was J-E’s first man, completing the 2.5 mile course in 13 minutes and 48 seconds (11^th place).  Donohue was disappointed with his effort from Saturday’s race, though, as he said that he usually feels sick at the end of most races, and he felt fine at the end of the Oswego race.  “I ran hard, but I did not give it my all” said Donohue, “there’s no way those two Weedsport runners should ever beat me”.  Weedsport’s Mike Greer and Shaun Daly were just ahead of Donohue in  9^th and 10^th respectively (13.36 and 13.39).  Donohue’s time was 19 seconds slower than his 2005 time. 

     Donato Direnzo was J-E’s second man finishing one place behind Donohue (12^th place), fifteen seconds off his pace.  “We must not forget that Donato was our seventh man last year, and for him to move to the second position so quickly is amazing” said Roman.  Direnzo shaved 38 seconds off of his 2005 time.  Not too far behind was J-E’s third man, junior Jake Griffin who finished in 18^th place in a time of 14.24.  Griffin is easily the team’s most improved runner as he destroyed his 2005 time by a minute and 49 seconds. 

     In 23^rd place was J-E’s fourth man, senior Shelby Brayton, who ran 5.48 per mile on the Oswego Course.  Brayton completed the 2.5 mile course in 14.31, 32 seconds faster than 2005.  “Shelby ran very well considering his pre-season was interrupted by several excused absences.  In addition, Brayton had to take his military physical fitness exam on Thursday and Friday and was pre-occupied by the death of a fellow firefighter, whose funeral ironically was taking place during Saturday’s race.  “I wasn’t able to be there to honor my comrade, so I took my fury and frustrations and put them into this race” said Brayton.

     J-E’s fifth man was freshman Mike Marrero who was 33^rd, and ran 14.58 (5.59 per mile) on Oswego’s course.  “We’ve had freshman score in the past, so it’s not unheard of to have a frosh do so well, but honestly, I think there is so much more to come from this kid” said J-E’s Roman.

     Seniors Kyle Bard and Andy Degray were 6^th and 7^th men respectively for J-E.  Bard’s ran 15 minutes and 16 seconds and was 37^th in the race and his time was 38 seconds faster than his 2005 time.  Degray finished in  45^th place in a time of 15.57.  Degray was visibly limping when he finished the race due to a nagging shin injury that he aggravated when he came down hard on a rock during the hilly phase of the course.

     J-E’s JV times and places are as follows:

32	Brauchle, George	10	Jordan-Elbridge Boys	6:22	15:57.38
46	Stanton, Cody	9	Jordan-Elbridge Boys	6:34	16:27.54
57	Sullivan, Matt	9	Jordan-Elbridge Boys	6:46	16:56.75
62	Becker, Kyle	10	Jordan-Elbridge Boys	6:49	17:03.88
75	Kirk, Dylan	9	Jordan-Elbridge Boys	7:23	18:28.19
78	Hogan , Brendan	10	Jordan-Elbridge Boys	7:30	18:45.22

     Jordan-Elbridge travels to Cazenovia College on Friday to race in a rare Friday night extravaganza.  The Boys Varsity and Junior Varsity teams will race in the same race which begins at 5:00 pm.

NOTES: The Junior Varsity race was delayed about 15 minutes due to a severe thunderstorm cell that passed through the areas, forcing race officials to suspend all activities for ½ an hour.  Juniors Direnzo and Griffin, and senior Shelby Brayton scored for the first times in their careers.  Tully freshman Sam Ohure, won the JV Race in an amazing 13.42.  Ohure is another orphan from the African nation of Sudan and follows in the huge shadow cast by state champion and Tully graduates Lopez Lomong and Dominick Luca.  J-E junior varsity runners George Brauchle and Brendan Hogan sliced huge amounts of time off of their 2005 Oswego times.  Brauchle cut 38 seconds off of his time and Hogan cut 58 seconds.  Senior Kyle Merrill should have enough practices to officially race in the Cazenovia Invitational Friday.