Area athletes take 13 medals at Empire State games

The 23rd annual Empire State Games were in the Hudson Valley with 28 sports at the scholastic, open and master's division levels. Among the thousands of athletes competing, several from the area took home 13 medals including six gold medals.

Holley's Traci Spanitz led the way winning the Open Women's Bowling All-Around with 2,085 and taking a silver medal in the Singles competition with 5,083.

Other gold medalists from the area include Medaille College sophomore and Hilton graduate Marisa Clark, who was part of the Open Women's Basketball team. They defeated Hudson Valley in overtime in the gold medal game.

Churchville's Liz Zorn scored three goals and added two assists for the Scholastic Women's Ice Hockey Western Team to help them to gold. They defeated Long Island 4-0 to take the title.

The Open Men's Soccer team also took gold with a 3-0 win over New York City in the final match. Spencerport native Patrick Gallagher scored a goal in a 5-0 victory over Adirondack in one of the preliminary games. In Scholastic Men's Soccer, Spencerport's Justin Farnsworth was part of the defensive unit that helped the Western squad to gold with a 2-0 win over Hudson Valley in the medal game.

In Open Men's Volleyball, Spencerport's Ricky Albano helped the West to gold as they won the final match of the tournament against New York City to send the final match into a playoff. The Western unit won 25-23 for their 10th consecutive gold medal - the longest active medal streak in the games.

Silver medalists were Holley's Jesse Doty in the Open Men's Hammer Throw with a toss of 61.36m while Jaclyn Burch from Hilton and Julie Lenhard of Spencerport won silver with the Women's Open Soccer team. Brockport's Steve Crowe took silver in the Open Men's One Meter Diving competition with 421.15. Robert McClaren of Holley and Kirstin Rose from Hilton each took home a silver medal in Scholastic Men's and Women's Fencing, respectively.

Brockport's Amanda Westcott won bronze in the Open Women's Long Jump in 5.17m. She also finished sixth in the Triple Jump.

In total, the West won 251 medals: 103 gold, 80 silver and 68 bronze. Hudson Valley was second with 156 medals.