Pirate Relays coaching time trials cram course in selecting Port Chester picks for Penn Relays
April 18, 2024 at 12:22 a.m.
New Port Chester head Track & Field coach Greg Domestico has been away from coaching three sports at his alma mater for more than a decade now. And the ex-Ram triple threat in football, wrestling and T&F back in the day—who went on to coach those sports in Port Chester as well as elsewhere—is wasting no time getting reacquainted with his Rams and Lady Rams team in a novel way. He is testing their ability in ways and places where they have rarely if ever been tested before.
For the first time since 2013, for example, Domestico will be taking Port Chester sprint and middle distance relay teams back into the prestigious Penn Relays at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia this weekend to see how they stack up against the nation's best teams.
Tune-up for Penn Relays
As a tune-up for the Penn Relays, he entered Port Chester into the locally prestigious Pirate Relays in Pearl River for the first time ever so the Rams and Lady Rams could compete against some of the best teams in the state.
It has been like a cram course into the Port Chester Track & Field team for Domestico as a way of charting the local running, jumping and throwing talent base, an ongoing series of time and distance trials.
And the local student-athletes have been coming through with flying colors.
Penn Relays tune-up
In the Pirate Relays Apr. 6, a recent Saturday, the fastest Ram sprinters clocked 1:43.09 for the 4x200-meter relay running with a quartet that included John Delcid, Marc Dorsainvil, Johaan Espinal and Jaycee Rodriquez.
The 4x400-meter relay hit the tape in 4:07.73 running with a foursome that had Rodriguez, the lead-off-leg, handing off to Anderson Duran, Cristian Montenegro and Jeremy Salazar with each runner racing the metric equivalent of a quarter mile.
The sprint medley quartet broke down the four legs into a lead off 400-meter run by Duran, two 200-meter legs sprinted by Dorsainvil and Salazar with Santiago Marquez, the Rams’ only All-League cross-country runner, striding through the 800-meter anchor leg, the metric equivalent of a half mile.
The leading ladies
The Lady Rams leading ladies, the quickest of the quick, included Juliana Castillo, Casey Schultz, Mia Pagnotta and Liz Cruz running the 4x100-meter relay in 58:94 with the same quartet coming back to sprint through the 4x200-meter relay in 1:58.8.
Pagnotta then came back on the sprint relay as did Schultz and Cruz with Alexandra (Alee) Cruz, Liz's big sister, stepping in for the anchor half-mile leg. They hit the finish line in 5:16.35.
In a grueling test of speed and stamina, Pagnotta, a college scholarship candidate for her performance with the nationally-ranked Port Chester cheerleading team, also ran for the fourth time in different events by running the leadoff leg on the 4x400-meter relay, teaming up this time with Alexa Aguiriano and Kimberly Flores while Alexandra (Alee) Cruz doubled by running the anchor leg, each runner racing the metric equivalent of a quarter mile.
Amazing feat, jump
It represents an amazing feat for Alee Cruz, one of the school's smartest students with a 98.2 grade point average while working more than 40 hours a week in a part-time supermarket bakery job to help support her family. Because to follow the half mile sprint relay anchor leg by running a quarter-mile anchor leg on the metric equivalent of a mile relay is an especially hard-to-do middle distance daily double with only short rest intervals in between. And it shows what a hard worker she is and how determined she is to succeed at whatever she does.
Castillo is another case in point because she not only excelled in the sprint events but had enough left in the tank to broad jump 14:3, that kind of performance indicative of why she and her sprint buddy Schultz lost only once all season long playing doubles for the Lady Rams undefeated league championship tennis team.
What all those names and performances indicate is that the Pirates Relays give Domestico, Lady Rams head coach Danny Alvarado and key Rams assistant coach Nick Mancuso a better idea of who the Port Chester front runners will be when it comes down to selecting the Rams and Lady Rams who will make up the relay teams going to the Penn Relays for what may well turn out to be the highlight of their high school T&F careers.
Whoever that is, and wherever the chosen local runners finish, it is guaranteed to be a time to remember forever.
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