West Seneca Sun section B 10-19-2014

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Sports & Entertainment LEGUIZAMO PERFORMS IN BUFFALO The West Seneca & Elma Sun / Saturday, October 18, 2014

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2014

West Seneca East answers only loss of season with big win over Hamburg By Aaron Garland SPORTS REPORTER

In the immediate aftermath, the dejection was painted on the faces of players on the West Seneca East football team. It had just lost, 14-7, to South Park on Sept. 26 in a meeting that was going to go a long way in figuring the Class A South champion. So the pain was understandable, approaching a big victory before seeing it slip away. But the shelf life of the heartbreak was rather short. East got right back to work, wanting to prove why it has become a premier team in the division. The mission was a second-place finish, thus home field in the first round of playoffs two weeks from now. The road there was completed Friday night (Oct. 10), when the Trojans hosted Hamburg in the A South finale for both teams, with the winner claiming second place. For East, it was mission accomplished. John Dolac rushed for 199 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries while adding a pick-six to lift the Trojans to a 29-7 victory over the Bulldogs. “The loss to South Park kind of knocked us down,” said Tyler Skretny, who ran for a touchdown and added a handful of tackles Friday.

See “East” on page B2

DAVE ECKHARDT

West Seneca East senior Tyler Sktretny, 20, notched a 5-yard touchdown run during Oct. 10’s home win over division foe Hamburg.

West’s Covley race walks her way to school’s record book in first cross country season By Aaron Garland SPORTS REPORTER

BILL WENDE/SECTION6RUNS.COM

Senior Margaret Covley joined cross country to prep her for track and field.

Margaret Covley hasn’t been race walking for long. She’s been on the West Seneca West cross country team for an even shorter period. But the senior’s body of work suggests otherwise. Covey began race walking during the indoor track and field season as a junior, and this season is her first doing cross country. That hasn’t stopped her from breaking the school’s girls five-kilometer race walk record twice in the last month. The initial recordbreaker was Sept. 23 at Sunshine Park in an ECIC I event versus Lancaster. Covley set the new program and course mark by .10 seconds, racing a 32:34.40 to narrowly best the standard set by 2014 graduate, former training partner and friend, Taylor Ksiazek, who is attending SUNY Oswego. “Before she left for school we were talking and she told me that if I didn’t tell her all of my times from this year she’d be mad,” Covley said. “She was the first person I told. She told me she was

very proud of me. At the end of last year she said if anyone was going to break her record she wanted it to be me.” That time as the best ever at West lasted all of 11 days. On Oct. 4, at a competition in Grove City, Pennsylvania, Covley obliterated what she ran at Sunshine, racing to a finish of 31:35.60. Shortly after that, on Oct. 7, West competed at Sunshine against Orchard Park and Covley’s 31:50.10 shattered the site record she posted a couple weeks earlier. “I wanted to do my best, I guess was my goal coming into this year,” Covley said. “I knew the times that Taylor hit last year, so I always had those times in the back of my mind. But to go and beat both records (school and course), it was just amazing to me.” Race walk is not a scored event in cross country, unless a walker can land in a qualifying spot among the field of runners, which is difficult. A race walker always needs to have one foot planted and the lead leg must not bend as it comes in contact with the ground. It’s a technically demanding event, which is a

partial reason Covley went out for cross country in the first place. She joined the team and attended voluntary practices four days a week from early July to late August to enhance her endurance — “I was never really a longdistance runner,” Covley said — strength and form. Covley was at practice by 8:15 a.m. each day, ready to run between two and four miles and race walk the same distance. It’s working up to indoor track and field, as race walk is a sanctioned event as a 1,500-meter race. West coach Emilio Mancino convinced Covley to join cross country by pointing out how well Ksiazek performed during indoor track and field — she qualified for states in 2014 — after race walking in the fall. “I didn’t want anything holding me back at the end of the (outdoor) season,” Covley said of the decision to sign up for cross country after running sprints and high jumping in addition to race walking over her high school track career.

See “Race walk” on page B3


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