Seaford runs away with conference title

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When Seaford’s Jason Linzer finished in second place on Oct. 28 at the Nassau Class C championship cross country meet with a time of 16:23.64, three seconds shy of North Shore’s Jack Rosencrans, the two runners not only blew away the rest of the field, but had just registered the two fastest 5-kilometer times this season in Nassau County.

But the two athletes were ready for an encore.

The following Saturday, at the state qualifying meet at Bethpage State Park, Rosencrans, a senior, and Linzer, a sophomore, finished first and second again, with Linzer three seconds shy of Rosencrans’s 16:10.90 – breaking their own season records they set the week before.

“The biggest joke in Nassau County is what will Jason do next year when he doesn’t have Jack to race?” longtime Seaford coach Ed Trentowski said with a laugh. “In my experience, there’s always someone else.”

Linzer’s successful season – he earned All-State this past Saturday with a 13th place finish at the state championships at Sunken Meadow State Park – headlined another successful Seaford cross country campaign this fall, as the school finished a perfect 13-0 to run away with the Conference 4 championship.

It was a season Trentowski said his runners took seriously from the get-go, bookended by an early season September heat wave and a late October swell of torrential rain.  In the Oct. 28 county championship meet, Seaford had five runners finish in the top 19. After Linzer, junior Al Munro, senior John Krzyminski, junior Joe Randazzo and senior Tim Saulpaugh all clocked in with times under 18:30, each averaging under six minutes per mile. Seaford earned second place in the meet and all five athletes were named All-County.

Senior Steven Keane and junior Dylan Baker, who were the school’s next two finishers in the meet, earned All-Conference. “That’s a rarity to have your top seven do so well,” Trentowski said. “They worked hard, took it seriously and had fun.”

While Munro consistently clocked in the team’s second-best times this season, Trentowski said the next three spots fluctuated all season between Krzyminski, Randazzo and Saulapugh, which the coach said worked to his team’s benefit. “That’s really good,” he said. “It brings about team competition.

“I really can’t say enough good things about them,” Trentowski added. “They rose to the occasion at the best possible time to do it.”  

Junior Sarah Keane joined Linzer in representing Seaford cross country at Saturday’s state championships. To get there, she ran her personal best time of 19:51.24 at the state qualifier on Nov. 4.