The Sachem East girls cross country team put together their best overall team performance of the season on Saturday, finishing a close second to favorite Northport in the Class A Championship race at Sunken Meadow.
Seventeen teams had qualified for the race with four of them: Northport, Sachem North, Ward Melville, and Sachem East all ranked in the top 25 in New York State.
With only the winner advancing to next week’s State Meet, and an outside shot for a 2nd team to be selected to the NYS Federation Champs Meet held the following week, the East squad tried it’s best to pull off the upset with Northport first (51 points), Sachem East second (79), and Ward Melville (120) Bayshore (132) and Sachem North (145) taking the next three places.
East’s top pack of Val Romero (10th), Shannon O’Hehir (11th), and Karli Murphy (12th) led the team with Jayda Allen (25th) and Jill Manfredi (28th) completing the scoring for the Arrows. Nikki Silvestre and Jaimie Fleming both displaced scorers from 12 of the 17 teams to further separate East from the pack. Silvestre was named to the Suffolk County All-Academic team, with Romero, O’Hehir, Murphy, Allen, and Manfredi all selected to the All-County team.
The squad will continue to train with the outside shot of a NYS Federation Champs Meetbid, but has already qualified for the Nike Regional Championships held November 30 at upstate’s Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls.