The beauty of High School sports is that there is always a new face ready to debut. Seniors graduate, and new athletes come in to take their place. Each week, we take a look at one of the names that are here to stay over the next few years, as they take on the veterans of our Sport.
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Ryan Sykes (Horace Greeley) sits atop the leaderboards for the highest Speed Rating of the Season. Not bad for a sophomore who finished out the Season ranked 44th as a freshman. But that was before Track, which saw the Section 1 athlete smash the Indoor and Outdoor State Freshman Records over 2miles. It was all an indication of big things to come.
Sykes got his start running triathlons', combining his swimming fitness with his running prowess. He transitioned that over to Indoor Track as an 8th Grader, and his first skirt with a State Record. His Outdoor 2mile time was just three seconds off the 8th Grade State Record. Those records would come one year later, after a successful XC campaign. Sykes would finish 11th at NXN Regionals, just two slots away from becoming the youngest male individual qualifier for Nationals ever.
Now a sophomore, Sykes opened his season with a merge win at the Queensbury Pre-State Invitational. Running 15:29.3, he outran two athletes under 4:!5 for the mile on the track, indicating his fitness took another jump over the Summer. His Speed Rating for that effort, 181.23, is the highest of the yeae so far. He would go on to finish runner-up the week after at the Dan Purdy Invite in Pawling.
Greeley will be racing at the Bowdoin XC Classic this weekend, against US #3 CBA of NJ.
