Boilermaker 5K M15-19: Sweet Claims the Title in Utica's Thick Summer Heat

• Sawyer Sweet wins in 18:09 (5:51/mi), taking the M15-19 crown on his home streets in Utica.
• Top-3 separation: only 45 seconds covered the podium — Sweet at 18:09, Christopher Carbone at 18:50, and Cristian Torres at 18:54.
• Tight mid-pack battle: five runners — Jack Reale (19:13) through Ian Grove (19:24) — finished within 11 seconds of each other for places 4 through 7.
• 15-year-old Ian Grove finished 7th in 19:24 (6:15/mi), one of the youngest athletes in the field to crack the top ten.

With 75°F temperatures and 90% humidity pressing down on Utica, the M15-19 field of 140 runners faced a genuinely punishing morning — which makes the front of this race all the more impressive. Sawyer Sweet, 17, crossed in 18:09 at a 5:51/mi clip to take the win on his home course. That's a slightly slower time than his 9th-place men's finish here in 2024 (17:57), but the conditions were real, and Sweet delivered when it counted most, converting a top-ten men's result from a year ago into an outright M15-19 victory.

Right behind him, Christopher Carbone and Cristian Torres ran almost the same race as each other — Carbone in 18:50 and Torres in 18:54 — but the gap back to Sweet was the real story. Sweet had 41 seconds on Carbone at the line, a commanding margin at this distance. Notably, Carbone also ran the 2024 Boilermaker 5K, finishing 10th among the men in 18:06, so both he and Sweet arrived with proven credentials on this course and delivered again.

Places 4 through 7 produced the afternoon's best subplot. Jack Reale (16, New Hartford), Tj Swinson (19:21), Antonio Bridenbecker (19:23), and Ian Grove (19:24) compressed into an 11-second window — four runners, four different towns, all refusing to let go. Grove, just 15 years old, held his own against older competitors to close out that group in 7th. Brody Anderson (8th, 19:38) and Gabriel Bryer (9th, 19:50) rounded out a strong top ten before the field spread out considerably heading toward Tyler Quackenbush in 10th at 20:32.