Averill Parks’ Abbie Wicks shakes off injury to record two solo wins at the Shenendehowa Invitational

The night for Abbie Wicks got off to an ominous start when, as she was getting loose for the 100-meter final, she took a couple of hops to limber up until landing on her starting blocks on the final hop. 

The resulting sore ankle was compounded by a slow start coming out of the blocks but once the race was 10-meters in, the Averill Park junior found her stride, crossing the line first in 12.39 seconds to record the first of two solo wins for Wicks Friday night at the Shenendehowa Invitational. 

“I didn’t have a great start but I ran through it and ran through the line,” Wicks said. “Just had to push as hard as I could. I was supposed to take it easy but I had to. I have a slow reaction time (on starts). It was right after I twisted my ankle, it’s kind of bruised and swollen but I still have to run.”

Wicks iced her ankle after the 100 and was ready to go for the 400, finishing in 58.24 seconds.

“I don’t know how I would have felt had I lost,” Wicks said. “I got out as fast as I could, I paced off the leader and kicked in at the 200 (meter mark) and went has hard as I could.”

Spurred on by individual wins by Maeghan Hickey (100-hurdles), Willow Novak in the 200 and a pair of wins by Cadence Brewer in the discus and shot put, Guilderland won the team title with host Shenendehowa finishing second. 

Hickey blistered the track with her anchor leg for her team’s win in the 400-relay. 

“The four-by-one, we wanted to break the school record today, which we did and then we qualified for nationals and broke the meet record too,” Hickey said. 

Led by Justin Colindres’ win in the 400-hurdles, Shenendehowa won the boy’s team title. 

Colindres sought the meet record heading in the meet and met his goal, finishing in 53.97 to eclipse the mark of 55.33 set by David Gravely of Amsterdam in 2015.

“The first hurdle was iffy, I was worried about that, then the hurdles were good after until the second to last hurdle on the last curve, was also very iffy,” Colindres said. “I went very high over it but coming off the last hurdle, I saw I was at 50 seconds and thought this could be something big.”

In the 800, Guilderland senior Will Cusato fended off a challenge from Nate Davis of Columbia in the final 200 meters. 

Using the experience that comes with running on the varsity for six years, Cusato sensed Davis’ rally bid halfway through the final lap as Davis was making his bid for the lead, though Cusato dug deep for the win, finishing in 1:55.72 with Davis coming in second in 1:57.13. 

“The pace was just about what I wanted, there were a lot of people outside of me trying to cut in and it forced me to get out harder than I thought I needed to,” Cusato said. “I did hear him (Davis) coming, I wasn’t really expecting it but it really helped me push that stretch. I looked at my shadow but I didn’t know who it was, I heard the name “Nate”, he’s really good so I expected him to be right there.”

Cusato returned to the track late in the meet to anchor Guilderland’s victorious 3,200-relay team. 

Double winners on the boy’s individual events were Carter Peterson of Fonda-Fultonville in the 110-hurdles and the pole vault, Columbia’s Alexandros Wheeler took honors in the long and triple jumps and Alessandro Saltsman of Fonda-Fultonville, who set meet records in the shot put and discus, where he bettered the previous standard by 28 feet.

Sean Martin, a local freelance writer, is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.