Rams and Lady Rams T&F team off and running with record bronze medal haul in Rasbeck Relays

May 15, 2024 at 10:55 p.m.

It was the kind of team excellence that should be preserved in bronze, immortalized in the annals of Port Chester Track & Field history as a monument to speed on the run.

And, as a matter of fact, it was.

Because the Rams and Lady Rams T&F team did something that had never been done before by any Port Chester team.

They ran away with 12 bronze medals in 12 different relays in the Doc Rasbeck Relays in Irvington last Saturday (5/11).

And they did it in races ranging from the sprints to the middle distances to the long distances as well as the field events.

The Doc Rasbeck Relays turned out to be just what the doctor ordered for the surging team as they race into the Westchester County championships Friday (5/17) and Saturday (5/18) at Hen Hud and Yorktown at 4:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. respectively.

Relay record tune-up

So "The Rasbeck" relay carnival turned out to be quite a tune-up for the championship events to come.

And what a tune-up it turned out to be, the running equivalent of a symphony composed of fast-flowing arms and legs instead of dancing musical notes.

As an overture for what was to come, going up and down the scale, the Rams raced to a bronze medal third place finish in the 4x100-meter relay with a quartet of John Delcid, Anderson Duran, Jaycee Rodriguez and Ramaul Morgan. Each runner averaged just under 12 seconds on the run.

Barely pausing to catch their breath, that same quartet came racing back to take another bronze in the 4x200 relay in a time of 1:38.97.

Next—and the next bronze—came when the 4x400-meter relay hit the finish line in 3:51.9 with the foursome of Eduardo Sanchez, Nicholas Wolff, Santiago Marquez and Alejandro Salinas, each runner racing the metric equivalent of a quarter mile.

If you can medal as a quarter-miler, as they did, it shows you have really been practicing and paying your dues, because the race is an almost all-out sprint once around the track. And that requires being in very good shape. And if you doubt that, you should try it sometime.

Upping the distance

But the Rams said you ain't seen nothing yet because the 4x800 quartet also raced to a bronze medal with two of the runners, Marquez and Salinas, doubling on the second and third leg, while Jonathan Abraham ran lead off and Christopher Zamora anchored.

In case you are keeping track, that means each runner strode their way twice around the track, running the metric equivalent of a half mile each, hitting the finish line in 9:36.63.

As a change of pace and space, kind of like a blend of jazz and waltz tempo, next came the spring medley and 3,200-meter team race, with the sprint medley relay (200-100-100-400) running jazzily fast (1:49.25) while slowing down a bit because the first three sprint legs (Duran, Delcid and Rodriguez) had already raced in different events while the anchor (Eduardo Sanchez) was still fresh, a necessity for a quarter-miler.

But Abraham and Salinas then both kicked in with all their long distance training to each run the metric equivalent of two miles to finish second and win another bronze in the 3,200-meter Team Race. Abraham clocked 11:46.92 while Salinas hit 12:03.88. And that's with each of them striding eight times around a quarter-mile track. Round and round and round they went like they were running a circular cross-country event one grueling step at a time, a one-two-three energy-sapping waltz lock step that didn't unlock until the finish line finally loomed ahead.

Not to be undone, the Lady Rams kept on high stepping their way into the bronze medal hit parade.

The leading ladies

The ladies who sprint included Juliana Castillo, Casey Schultz, Liz (Elle) Cruz and Mia Pagnotta—and did they ever because that foursome raced to bronze medals which included second place finishes in the 4x100 in 53.25 (a personal record) and 4x200 in 1:55.31. Pagnotta came back to run the lead off leg on the 4x400-meter relay that took yet another bronze with Alexandra (Alee) Cruz, Kimberly Flores and Alexa Aguiriano running the other three legs.

The Lady Rams 4x800 relay just missed a bronze, clocking 12:49.44 in a fourth place finish racing with a quartet revolving around Mayerlin Torres, Chenoa Marquez, Katherin Espinoza and Camila Ramos. But the speedy foursome of Castillo, Liz Cruz, Schultz and Flores came back for more bronze and got it in the sprint medley relay, clocking 2:04.05 along the way. The distance medley relay represented a different kind of challenge with a variety of long and middle distances ranging from the metric equivalent of three quarters of a mile to a quarter mile, a half mile to a mile with Torres, Andrea Barajas, Abigail Pesantez and Marquez finishing out of the money in 15:53.99. It is a race that is like a survival of the fittest, and just finishing shows how hard you have worked to be on the track competing in that kind of endurance test.

More in the tank

Nonetheless Marquez and Torres had enough left in the tank to come back and take a second place bronze medal in the 3,200-meter Team Race with Marquez clocking 15:12.62 while Torres hit 15:36.19.

And so it want into the field events with Castillo and Allegra Burke finishing second in the long jump with Castillo (14:4) and Burke (a personal record 14:11) combining for bronze medal-winning jumps as did Wolff (19 feet even) and Joseantonio Velasquez (17:2.5).

When all was said and done, the Lady Rams ended up winning a second place team plaque while the Rams finished third competing against Class A teams like Mamaroneck, Horace Greeley, Yorktown and Carmel.

Ram and Lady Ram head coaches Greg Domestico and Danny Alvarado and their veteran sidekick Nick Mancuso are looking forward to an encore and still more medal-winning performances in the upcoming varsity County Meet Friday and Saturday.

Maybe even more beautiful running music and another strong bronze medal haul.