East Meadow's Hall sisters run to states

It will be a family affair for East Meadow at the New York State Cross Country Championships.

Sophomore Zaria Hall won the girls’ 5K race by just four-tenths of a second and older sister Anaya placed a comfortable fourth during the state qualifier at Bethpage State Park last Saturday and both will be heading to Verona this weekend.

Senior Paige Barnett was 10th and freshman Lila Doyle and junior Allison Twible placed 23rd and 27th, respectively, in the 99-girl field to help the Jets finish second in the team competition behind Syosset. Marcheline Simbulan was 31st and fellow freshman Anvi Bonanthaya finished 37th.

“They really met our expectations,” coach Michael Ringhauser said of his girls. “Syosset is a really good team, so we were a little short on the team score, but looking at it as seven individuals, the girls really ran about as well as they could have.”

East Meadow, which captured its first regular season conference title in about 15 years, according to Ringhauser, competed as a team in last year’s state event and the Halls return as individuals. Zaria was 43rd at Verona last fall and Amaya was 97th.

“The two of them really hit their peak this season and look to do really big things at the state championship,” Ringhauser said.

Zaria Hall’s time of 18 minutes, 52.70 seconds on Saturday was the second-fastest in school history at Bethpage. Ringhauser said the plan was to break the race down into segments and have Hall sit back until around the last half-mile before making a push.

She eventually made her move at leader Isabella Spagnoli of Great Neck South and the two battled it out near the finish line.

“With 400 meters to go, [Hall] just started pulling away,” Ringhauser recalled. “Spagnoli has a good kick too, so it was tight until the end, but Zaria was able to pull it out in the last 50 meters or so.”

Anaya Hall finished with a time of 19:23.80, the fourth-best time on the track in program history and 10 seconds better than fifth-place Eve Siff-Scherr of Port Washington.

Though her run didn’t result in a trip to Verona, Barnett’s performance was the latest example of her stark improvement from 2022.

“Paige Barnett has come a really long way,” Ringhauser said. “The difference between last year and this year, she’s dropped 56 seconds in her 5K. She went from 21st in the county last year to seventh this year, so she’s just really let a good effort and helped mentor three really good freshmen that we have coming up.”

The boys’ team finished sixth on Saturday, with senior Zyad Mohamed placing ninth with a time of 17:07.40, his fastest and the 11th-best performance in school history on that course. He ran 17:51.7 the previous week during the county championships at Bethpage.

“He’s been our front runner the whole season,” Ringhauser said. “He’s really taken to trying to establish a little bit of a legacy for himself, but this is the first time he’s earned All-County honors.”

Junior Anthony Palmeri was 26th with a time of 17:51.90, almost two seconds better than his performance at the counties.