Colonie’s Kyle Plante and John Drabik continued their strong indoor track and field seasons by winning individual events at Saturday’s Section II Championships at the University at Albany.
Coming off her victory at last week’s Eastern States Classic in New York City, Plante easily handled the competition in the girls 300-meter dash finals. Plante won with a time of 39.8 seconds, more than two seconds ahead of runner-up Kathleen Klein of Shenendehowa.
Plante also ran the lead leg for Colonie’s 1,600-meter relay team, which took first place with a time of 4:07.3. Kristina Lenge, Uwa Omorogbe and Corrine Serrano were also part of Colonie’s winning relay.
Drabik couldn’t match his Section II record time of 6.1 seconds in the boys 55-meter dash Saturday, but he still bested the field in the finals. Drabik fini-shed with a winning time of 6.3 seconds, two-tenths of a second ahead of Albany’s Kareem Morris.
Elsewhere on the boys’ side, Shaler’s Matt Conti and Christopher Herman keyed a pair of impressive performances by the Blue Bison.
Conti and Herman swept the top two places in the 600-meter race and helped Shaker’s 1,600-meter relay team take first place at Sectionals.
Conti pulled ahead of Herman to win the 600 with a time of 1:24.0. Herman finished second with a time of 1:24.2, and Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake’s Chris Fernandez was third with a time of 1:24.5.
Herman ran the second leg, and Conti handled the anchor leg for Shaker’s 1,600 relay team, which finished with a winning time of 3:30.5. Brendan Dolan and Ruben Feinman made up the other half of the Blue Bison’s relay team.
All of the winners at Saturday’s Sectional meet qualified for this weekend’s state indoor track and field meet at Cornell University in Ithaca.`