The Voorheesville boys’ 4x800-meter relay team and Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s Ada Lauterbach competed in the New York State meet this past weekend.

All the local competitors had good showings at the statewide meet at the University of Buffalo.

The Voorheesville team of seniors Mackey Lloyd and Ryan Allison and juniors Nathan Bub and Ian Powell finished second in the small-school division. Lauterbach finished third in the 2,000-meter steeplechase.

Lauterbach finished the race in 7:14.2.

“She finished in the top three in the state,” said BKW Coach Scott Hannay. “She was six seconds off her best time ever.”

Lauterbach’s finish put her 11^th overall including large schools.

“That’s something,” Hannay said. “The winner is the best girl in the country for 2008. She competed well in a very tough field.”

The state meet wrapped up an excellent career for Lauterbach at BKW.

“She was a state cross-country finalist and went to states for track,” Hannay said. “She set three school records. She’ll be going to the University at Albany and will compete there in cross-country and track. She’ll be a scholarship athlete there.”

Blackbirds finish second

The four Blackbirds came in looking to win the small-school 4x800 race but were in for a bit of a surprise.

They finished their race in a time of 8:09.08, much slower than they wanted but good enough to beat the teams they thought were their major competitors.

“We were looking at the teams that had been ahead of us,” said Voorheesville assistant track coach Phil Carducci, who accompanied the team to Buffalo. “We were looking at Pawling and Port Jefferson.”

The Birds beat out their rivals from Dutchess County and Long Island but didn’t factor in Tully of Section III, in the Syracuse area.

“They beat us by more than 10 seconds,” Carducci said. “It was by far their best time of the year. They ran in the slow heat, so it’s amazing.”

Tully finished its heat with a time of 7:54 to hold the lead in the event as Voorheesville ran in the much stronger heat.

“We were in the faster heat with everybody,” Carducci said. “We came out fast and tried to do it. Second is good.”

Allison started off the race by running 2:05 leg. Bub ran 2:04, Lloyd ran 1:58, and Powell ran 1:59 to close out the race.

“It was humid,” Carducci said. “We went out on Thursday and sat all day Friday. It was a long ride to sit around.”

Despite not winning the race, Carducci said the experience was good for his runners.

“They were disappointed but happy,” the coach said. “They finished well at states. It’s a big deal. Look how far we’ve come. We’re the Little School That Could. We’ll be back. Connor Cashin will move into a spot and we have some other guys that will come in and do well.

“They had a lot of fun,” Carducci added. “They were successful. They did get second. The downside is they didn’t win. We did beat Port Jefferson and we beat the top team, Pawling. We stood up to the challenge.”