Caz track seniors cap perfect run with meet win

By KuRt wHEElER

The Cazenovia girls track and field team topped off an undefeated regular season with a 126-15 victory over Phoenix last Tuesday at Buckley-Volo Field to capture the OHSL Liberty-National league title.

This victory was even sweeter for the team’s seniors who capped a perfect 16-0 career in dual meets. After losing their 9th grade season to COVID-19, the Class of 2023 ran off three unbeaten seasons and three league championships, part of a broader string of five in a row for the program and 11 in the past 13 years.

Senior captain Faith Wheeler led off the landmark victory with an outstanding 2:32.4 leg in the 4x800 meter relay. Reid McMurtrie matched her pace exactly in the second leg with Izzy Stromer-Galley and Senior Julia Reff also handling the baton to run a season best time of 10:20.8 to win the race. Wheeler returned later in the meet to win the 3000 meter in a time of 11:59.6.

Fellow captain Corinne Albicker was also brilliant for the Lakers, winning three events, including victories in the 100 meter hurdles (17.6 seconds) and 400-meter hurdles (1:12.5). Captain Bonnie Pittman was just steps behind, capturing second in both events, including a season best time of 1:14.2 in the 400 hurdles with Meghan Mehlbaum (1:14.3) completing the Cazenovia sweep.

Albicker also won the long jump (15 feet 8 inches) with Susie Pittman (14’11”) and Sophie Rheaume (14’11”) shutting out the Firebirds. Pittman returned to win the triple jump (33’9”), with Albicker second.

Senior captain Grace Dolan earned four victories including individual wins in the 400 (1:01.4) and 200 (career best of 26.8 seconds) while also leading off the Lakers’ winning 4x100 and 4x400 relays.

Freshman Alyssa Wardell backed up the college. She went on to work at Albany Medical College and SUNY Morrisville, and in 2020 she received her master’s in higher education administration from SUNY Stony Brook.

Dolan in the 400 with a personal best of 1:05.6 and returned with fellow freshman Audie Spring (29.7 each) to complete a Laker sweep of the 200. Wardell, Mehlbaum and Maura Phillips all added to the Laker victory in the 4x400 (4:31.0).

Senior Caitlyn Smithers joined Dolan, Spring and Rheaume to win the 4x100 relay in 53.6 with the “Seniors only” Cazenovia team of Jane Lee, Erin Kuhn, Cady Webb and Sami Carnahan also beating out the Phoenix foursome.

Smithers earned a victory of her own as she led a sweep in the pole vault, clearing 9 feet for first, with Susie Pittman second at 8’6” and Wheeler third at 8 feet.

Senior Riley Knapp capped off the Class of 2023’s winning efforts with a career-best time of 12.9 seconds for first in the 100meter dash with Smithers second at 13.4 as Spring (13.6) and Rheaume (13.7) also ran sectional times in the event.

Cazenovia’s juniors also got into the winners’ circle during the meet as Zoey Gagne won the 1,500 in a personal best time of 5:31.0 and Maddie Rothfeld won the shot at 29’6” and the discus with a personal record throw of 82’1”. Fellow juniors Karly Vaas (26’10” in the shot) and Olivia Morse (74 feet in the disc) also scored in the throws.

Not to be outdone, sophomore Susie Pittman and Freshman Maura Phillips also added first place finishes as Cazenovia won 16 of 17 events.

Pittman added to her triple jump victory with a winning leap of 4’8” in the high jump that was equaled by Mehlbaum for second. Phillips led a sweep of the 800 with a winning time of 2:39.1 as Lily Kogut and Lauren McLean also ran season bests to score.

Cazenovia would be back in action Monday as they strive to win their fifth straight Onondaga High School League Liberty League meet at Marcellus.

A dedicated and active alumna, Banks received the young alumni award from Cazenovia College in 2006, the volunteer of the year award in 2008, was a member of the alumni board of directors from 20042013, served as a trustee from 2006-2014, and was president of the Cazenovia College Alumni Association Board of Directors from 2007-2013. In 2013, she received the distinguished alumni award. Most recently, Banks was the interim president of the alumni board of directors from 2021-2022.

“As you graduate, you are leaving a campus of people that you are very fa- miliar with and going on to a very different world,” Banks said in her address.

“You are, however, being welcomed into a much larger group, the Cazenovia College alumni. The Cazenovia College alumni are a family, and your graduating class is the baby of the family. . . You are the youngest of the crew. You will always be known as the last to walk this campus, the last student government, the last athletic teams, and the last to walk this stage. Everyone will continually look back at your accomplishments. You are part of a rich history, so please do not ever forget that. As you go off to various places, be proud of the fact that you are Cazenovia graduates.”

Banks also encouraged the graduates to lean on and assist their fellow alumni going forward and to make themselves available to each other by organizing gatherings and setting up social media events, among other considerations.

“The important [thing] is to stay connected,” she said. “The doors of the campus may close, but the hearts of those who have come to know you will remain open. As alumni, we are now brothers and sisters of Cazenovia College. We look out for one another.”

At the end of the ceremony, all the Cazenovia College alumni in attendance were invited to join Wilson in singing the school’s alma mater:

“Sunlit Owahgena’s waters

Dash their spray on high; Nearby stands our Alma Mater, Famed in years gone by.

Hail thee fairest Cazenovia!

When from thee we part;

Yet thy name we’ll ever rev’rence

Fairest of our heart.”

Banks and each of the 2023 graduates received commemorative Cazenovia College coins featuring the college seal on one side and the alma mater on the other.

Cazenovia Garden Club initiative

Leading up to graduation day, Cazenovia resident Sandi Patrizio spearheaded a Cazenovia Garden Club-sponsored initiative to plant blue and gold pansies in baskets and planter boxes throughout the village as a sendoff to the college.

“We usually go from Christmas to June with nothing in the boxes, but this year I decided that with [this being the college’s last graduation] and with family coming into town, we should do something to honor them,” Patrizio said.

She added that she knew pansies were available in blue and gold, but she didn’t realize how difficult they would be to find.

“I didn’t get all blue and gold, because it was just not available, but I did the best I could to get as much blue and gold as possible [and put] blue and gold ribbons on Dave’s Diner,” she said.

Cazenovia College’s official closing date is June 30, 2023.

A gathering was held to honor the 50 years of the

Gathering celebrates 50 years of equine

at Caz College

Alumni, faculty and friends gathered at Cazenovia College in mid-April to honor the 50th anniversary of the school’s equine program.

“I think the word bittersweet defines this spring,” college President David Bergh told the crowd of 250 gathered at the Equine Education Center.

In mid-May, the final class will graduate, and the nearly 200-year-old college will close forever, a casualty of debt and declining enrollment.

But this day, Bergh said, was for remembrance and celebration.

“It’s important to know that the legacy of Cazenovia College doesn’t end here, and the legacy of equine – equestrian – is intertwined with that legacy and will go on with you,” he said.

In the center’s arena, program Director Barbara Lindberg led a toast to everyone and everything that made Cazenovia one of the premier equine programs in the Northeast, with a nationally recognized Equine Business Management specialization.

“The program is more than just a building,” said Lindberg. “The program is more than its star students. It is more than your favorite professors … The program is all of you.”

She toasted as well to absent friends and to the beloved school horses, all of whom will go to new homes, some to the former students who’d dreamed for years of owning them. And indeed, a shared passion – for horses, for riding, for excellence – is the thread that runs through the equine program’s five decades.

The program was approved in 1973 and the first students entered in 1974.

At that time, Cazenovia was a two-year college, and those earliest grads received an associate’s degree in physical education with an equine studies option. Within a year, it became a standalone associate’s program in horsemanship and stable and farm management.

Weese Sullivan Moore, a member of that first graduating class, has taught hunter seat riding classes as an adjunct for more than 30 years while running her own communitybased equine business.

Ann Fowler, an adjunct and the longest serving faculty member, has been with the program since 1983, first as barn manager then as a dressage instructor and – although she is now retired from that job – a nationally honored coach of the dressage team.

Of the students, Fowler said, “I’m so proud of their integrity, their horsemanship and their work ethic … I have so many memories. I truly do.”

In 1996, with Cazenovia’s transition to a four-year college, equine business management became a four-year specialization.

With it came a new 240-acre equine center, built in 1999, with stalls for 74 horses, classroom space, multiple outdoor riding areas and a heated indoor arena that twice played host to the national finals of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association.

For Dylan Dombrowski, a 2016 grad who ribboned twice at the IHSA finals in reining, the absence that will be felt with the college closing is immeasurable. He said the difference Cazenovia made in his life was, in a word, everything.

“It was an essential part of getting me to where I am, an essential part of all my goals,” Dombrowski, a sales supervisor at Purina who still competes in reining, said. “Everything is the word I think of … When I look at my life – personal, professional, my place in the horse world – it all links back to this college. When I say everything, I’m not exaggerating. Every aspect of my life is connected to this college.”