BOYS' HIGH SCHOOL CROSS COUNTRY: GREGORSKI, CORNING RUNNERS HEADLINE FIRST ALL-SOUTHERN TIER TEAM (2021-11-30)

By Brian Fees
Southern Tier Sports Report
Just how dominant was the Corning boys cross country team this year?

It was talented enough that it made the first ever All Southern Tier cross country team a little bigger than it was expected to be.

The plan was to do a Super 7 team for cross country, but Corning was so dominant that the first team included six Hawks runners.

So, we will be doing two teams of seven runners for the team.

A lot of times when it comes to major awards it’s hard to pick a winner. This year it wasn’t very tough.

Jack Gregorski became the first Corning boy since the merger of the two schools to be a cross country state champion. He just finished 7th at Eastbay Regionals to become the first Corning boy to earn a spot at Eastbay Nationals. He is this year’s Southern Tier Cross Country Boys’ Runner of the Year.

Ashton Bange had a dominant season himself. He won the Section 4 championship, he was fourth at states and he did all this in his first year in cross country and he’s the Newcomer of the Year.

The Hawks team won the state title in dominant fashion, they went one through five at both the STAC meet and the sectional meet and with Gregorski and Bange at Eastbay Nationals they were deep enough that the rest of the team took second at Nike Regionals running without their top two runners. Coach Ray Lawson led the Hawks this year, the third time he’s coached a state championship boys’ team, and he’s the coach of the year.

The first team is led by Corning runners with Gregorski, Bange, Matthew Gensel, Tevin McLaren, Gabe Cornfield and Joshua Beres all on the team. The other spot on the first team goes to Horseheads’ Axl Andrus, who was a state qualifier after taking sixth at sectionals.

The hardest choice on first team was what to do with all the Corning runners. Marcus Homa easily could have been a first team pick. At sectionals he was seventh on the team, just a second behind Beres. And he was ahead of Beres at the STAC meet. Meets like McQuaid had Beres finishing ahead of Homa and Beres was 17th, while Homa took 24th at regionals, while Beres was also ahead at states. It was all such a close fit with all the Corning runners, and Axl Andrus, and all earned spots on the All-Southern Tier Team.

The plan was to say we would only consider the top seven runners for any team for the All-Southern Tier team. The state meet only takes the top seven from a team, and DJ Cornfield wasn’t in the top seven at sectionals, and missed out on a chance at states. For the girls teams, and in the future, the plan is to stick to a max seven runners per team on the all-star team, but we had to make an exception for DJ Cornfield. He was among the team’s top four runners at the STAC Championships and at McQuaid. At sectionals he was eighth on his team, but his time was fast enough he would have made it as an individual if he ran on another team, and for that he’s on the second team for all stars.