The real challenge at the Penn Relays was finding a hotel room in Philadelphia.
The girls 3200-meter relay team competed on Thursday, April 23, and qualified for the championship round by posting the third fastest time of the day. Jillian Decker, Beatrice Boylan, Ashley Wallace and Dara Cuffe won their heat in 9:17.28 to set a new Cornwall record.
Their time was fast enough to earn them a berth in the finals on the following day. But there was one problem. They hadn’t booked any rooms for the night, and commuting from Cornwall seemed impractical.
Were they short-sighted in not making a reservation? Ashley Wallace didn’t think so. “We didn’t want to jinx ourselves,” she said. And you couldn’t blame the girls for not making plans in advance for the extra day. No Cornwall relay team had ever reached the finals.
When they returned to the track for the race dubbed “The Championship of America,” the girls almost matched their record-setting time. They ran 9:17.84 to finish fifth and go home with a pair of medals. They got one for winning their heat on Thursday, and another for finishing in the top five on Friday. Two of the teams that beat them were from Jamaica, British West Indies.
Cornwall had three other teams that did well.
Boys 4 x 400 m: Conner Russell, Jaron Wallace, Seth Goitia and Kevin Gangemi (placed 75th out of 550 teams) 3:25:41
Girls 4 x 100 m: Gabby Fanning, Kayla Meade, Alice Morgan, Lesley Nicosia (280th out of 616 teams) 52.77
Girls 4 x 400 m: Fanning, Meade, Morgan, Nicosia (66th out of 623 teams) 4:06.61. The girls received medals for winning their heat.
In Kingston on Saturday, two Cornwall teams won frosh-soph races: Gabby Fanning, Zoe Scileppi, Sydney Decker and Hannah Mellino won the 4 x 700 relay.
Mellino, Monika Morasse, Abby Munterich and Scileppi were first in the distance medley relay.
On Monday night, the Dragons hosted their annual Steeplefest, which is the shortest meet of the year. There are just two steeplechase races with a total of five heats. Beatrice Boylan (fourth place), Hannah Mellino, Zoe Scileppi and Gabe Thurau represented Cornwall. More than a dozen teams competed. An hour after the meet started, they were all going home.
