Just call them the silver girls.
    No, that isn’t a reference to age like the Golden Girls of TV fame and it isn’t a reference to a Simon and Garfunkel tune.
    These silver girls are Waverly’s Erika Kisel and Cat Hursh, who each claimed silver medals at the Empire State Games Friday.
    Kisel picked up her hardware first, taking second in the scholastic women’s 200-meter dash with a nice run of 26.19 seconds running for the Central team. Simone Grant of the Bronx, running for the New York City team, followed up her 26.13 run in Thursday’s semifinals with a winning time of 26.14.
    Yes, the race was that tight. The two were neck-and-neck off the turn.
    “It was definitely a close race to the finish,” confirmed Kisel.
Making the turn well was a point of emphasis during the spring track season and that work paid off Friday.
    “I felt very good coming off the corner,” said Kisel. “I think that every time I run the 200 I have to concentrate on the first 100 in the corner the most.”
Kisel was the second-fastest in the semis, running a 26.65, but made Friday’s race much closer.
    “I was feeling more confident,” said Kisel. “Yesterday, I was just aiming toward getting to the final. I definitely wanted to medal and that pushed me even harder.
    “It’s a good feeling to come here and medal because everyone here is good. This will definitely keep my confidence high. I’m looking forward to the winter season.”
    Hursh, who ran to a seventh-place finish in the open women’s 200-meter dash 10 minutes after Kisel took her silver, picked up her hardware a little over an hour later and in a different event; the long jump.
    Not only did Hursh place second for a silver medal, she blew her previous personal-record distance out of the water.
    Hursh didn’t long jump until her senior season at Waverly, setting her previous PR of 16-feet, 6-inches in her second-ever crack at the event during the 2007-2008 indoor track season.
    Friday, her leap was measured at 5.16 meters, which converts to roughly 16-feet, 11-inches. That put her second to Fayanne Francis of Henrietta, competing for the Western Region, who had a leap of  5.45 meters.
    So, what gave Hursh the push to go farther than she ever had before?
    “I honestly don’t know,” said Hursh. “Maybe it’s just not doing it for some time. I really like it and just having the opportunity to jump again (made the difference).”
Despite popping a 16-6 in her Central Region qualifier, Hursh knew she had it in her to fly farther.
    “I had a big jump at qualifiers that I faulted on, so I knew I was capable of doing better,” said Hursh. “I knew I was capable of jumping better the whole season, but it just never happened.”
    It did on her second jump Friday.
    Hursh isn’t done with her Games yet. She’ll be in the triple jump at 10:35 a.m. and the 1,600 -meter relay at 1:30 p.m. today at Binghamton State University.
    Then, she’s done with competition.
    Heading to Penn State in the fall, Hursh said she was going simply to be a student.
    “I might play intramural soccer for fun, but I’m not going to compete,” she said.
    So this is Hursh’s last big meet.
    “I didn’t think about that until today. I just wanted to have fun during the summer and I wanted to keep doing track because I like it,” she said. “I wasn’t really thinking about it as my last meet until somebody actually said it to me.”
    And she’d like nothing more than to go out with a bang.