Lansingburgh Athletes Achieve State Success
The winter sports season brought out the best in three Lansingburgh High School athletes who advanced to state-championship level competition, including one who brought home a state title.
Sophomore distance runner Alney Tobias earned top state honors as part of Section II’s Class A intersectional relay team that finished first at the New York State Indoor Track championship meet on Saturday, March 8 at Cornell University’s Barton Hall.
The team relay event includes participants running one of four distances: a mile, 1,000 meters, 600 meters and 200 meters. Tobias ran the 1,000-meter leg of the event.
His teammates were Otis Ubriaco of Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School, Zack Williams of Cobleskill-Richmondville H.S., and Kewsi Burgess of Albany H.S. They turned in a team time of 9:00.01, just eight seconds shy of the state record for the event.
The meet wasn’t the first time Tobias has competed at the state level. He has also qualified to compete in the fall-season’s state cross-country championship meet in each of the past two seasons. This year he finished 46th of 120 Class A-level runners at the state cross-country event.
Lansingburgh seniors Nick Oligney and Jim Bulmer also qualified to compete at the state level in their respective sports.
Bulmer participated in the state bowling tournament at White Plains Lanes. There he turned in a six-game score of 1,230 that placed him 23rd of 66 competitors. Bulmer’s score, though, was the highest of six bowlers from the Section II (Capital Region) area.
A Lansingburgh team member for the last three seasons, this year’s success came in the first time he was able to compete for a state berth in the Section II tournament. Injuries either kept him out of the sectional tournament, or prohibited him from competing in enough regular-season events to qualify for the sectionals over the past two seasons.
This year, though, his 1,470 pin total for six games in the sectional tournament that qualified him for the state meet was also the highest among all Section II bowlers.
Oligney, believed to be the first wrestler from Lansingburgh ever to qualify for the state meet in that sport, did not place in the state meet at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester. There, he won one of three matches at the 130-pound level.
Although he did not win a sectional title, he advanced to the state meet as a wild-card entrant via a point system based on results in his matches at the sectional level.
For more information contact:
Lansingburgh Central School District
518.233.6850