Each of the West Genesee track and field teams would try to step up to a higher level during last week’s Section III Class AA championship meets at Cicero-North Syracuse. In the boys meet on Wednesday afternoon, the Wildcats picked up 41.5 points and took eighth place in a 14-team field. Host CNS went to the top of the standings with 119.5 points. By the tiniest possible margin, junior Sean Howard got beat in the 100-meter dash. Howard hit the line in 11.10 seconds, while CNS’s Ryan Connor prevailed in 11.09 seconds- the difference of one-hundredth of a second. John DeLallo flew through 800 meters in 1:54.01, beating everyone except Liverpool star Zavon Watkins, who finished in 1;52.48. Billy Gabriel had a strong showing in the mile, the senior finishing in 4:15.87, just behind Watkins (4:14.58) and CNS’s Chris Buchanan (4:14.71). WG was fourth in both the 4×100 (44.70 seconds) and 4×800 (8:31.00) relays. Peter Richardson claimed fourth in the 400-meter hurdles in 59.23 seconds, while Peter James cleared 10 feet 6 inches for fourth place in the pole vault as Nico Rinaldo (10 feet) tied for sixth. Matt Ulrich was sixth (16.11 seconds) in the 110-meter high hurdles. Nate Conroy and Matt Serrao were ninth and 10th, respectively, in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. A day earlier, West Genesee’s girls team came to CNS for its sectional Class AA meet, and could only manage 30 points for seventh place in a 13-team field. Fayetteville-Manlius, with its deep pool of distance runners, gobbled up points in those events and won overall with 152 points. One example of this was the 1,500-meter run, where freshman Laura Leff, who set the Section III steeplechase record on May 14 at a meet in White Plains, got a time of 4:47.93, but had to settle for fourth place. Three F-M runners swept the top spots, led by Jillian Fanning, who won in 4:36.76. Leff, who was also third in the 3,000-meter run (10:28.52) behind Fanning and Courtney Chapman, did not run in the steeplechase – but Abby Kastick did, and worked her way to third place in 7:43.98. Emily Barriere had a better finish in the pentathlon, the sophomore picking up 2,070 points to finish second to Utica Prcotor’s Danielle Barker (2,175 points). In the 4×800, Anna Leo, Amy Hannahan, Lindsay Weaver and Alyssa Zeman finished fifth in 10:38.91. Paige Copeland worked her way to fourth in the 400 hurdles in 1:12.08.