Sunday, November 9, 2025
The MacArthur girls’ cross country team was kept in suspense before finding it had captured the program's first county title since 2008.
The Generals entered the awards ceremony following the Nassau Class I championship meet at LIU Post last Saturday knowing they were in second place at the 2.44 mile mark of the 3.1 mile 5K race unaware of where they stood after the finish line.
The Generals learned they tied Massapequa with 79 points for first place based on MacArthur’s top five runners and were one point ahead of 13-time county champion Syosset. The tiebreaker was decided by both teams’ sixth place finisher and MacArthur junior Leah Fortunato proved to be the decider in the historic title with a 30th place to edge out Massapequa’s next top placement of 44th.
“They pulled up the girls on both teams to the front and then they announced how the tiebreaker wins, and that Massapequa was the runner up team and then they announced that Leah Fortunato had beaten Massapequa sixth runner to win it for us,” said first year MacArthur coach Madison Seniuk. “We only ended up having eight girls finish the race when you could have had up to 10 so we had a very small team compared to the other teams that we were competing against and every person that ran really played a role.”
MacArthur positioned itself for Fortunato’s tiebreaker with its top five runners led by junior Gemma Budek, who placed second overall with a time of 18:45:10. The two-time captain improved on her fourth place finish at last year’s county championship.
Freshman Sinead Cromie shined with a 13th place finish culminating in a season where the first-year varsity runner made big strides.
“She started the season just running the novice race which is about a mile, mile and half long and it took a lot out of her to come in and actually run the entire 3.1 mile race,” said Seniuk of Cromie. “Over the last few weeks she has really proven herself to the team.”
The Generals also got strong performances from freshmen runners Grace O'Doherty (19th place finish) and Ava Leek (20th place).
Senior Caitlin Kilian rounded out the top five for MacArthur with a 25th place finish. The versatile Killian, who is also starting point guard on the basketball team, has proved to be a veteran leader.
“She really helps all the younger classmen make sure they're all prepared mentally and physically, “ said Seniuk of Killian. “She took the freshmen under her wing and showed them how to compete.”
