Prior to the Fayetteville-Manlius girls swim team’s trip to Liverpool last Tuesday night, no one had found a way to get in front of the Warriors in four years.
But the Hornets didn’t care about history. It just prevailed in the head-to-head battles, dominated in diving, and didn’t stop until it had wiped out Liverpool’s 29-meet win streak with a decisive 105-81 victory.
Right from the opening race, the direction was clear. Hadley Cameron-Carter, Melissa James, Liz Patrick and Alex Murphy worked together to give F-M the early advantage by winning the 200 medley relay in a blazing time of 1:55.82.
In the 200 freestyle, Ally Anderson, in 2:01.27, beat the Warriors’ Becky Evangelista by more than three seconds. Also in the early going, Kaitlin Wilcoxen (26.08 seconds) beat Brianna Capria (26.30 seconds) to take the 50 freestyle.
The real F-M getaway, though, came in diving. Displaying its depth, the Hornets had Amy Bright win with 182.30 points, and the Hornets also claimed the second and third spots for a full deck of points Liverpool could not match.
Still, the attack continued. In a heated 100 butterfly duel, Patrick showed her mettle, just beating Kelley Yaworsky to the wall, 1:02.39 to 1:03.04, for another individual win.
Cameron-Carter, in 56.69 seconds, came within inches of Becky Evangelista (56.65 seconds) in the 100 freestyle, by Anderson followed that up with her second victory of the meet, winning the 500 freestyle in 5:39.65.
F-M would get one more victory in the 100 backstroke, where Cameron-Carter needed 1:03.29 to prevail. Even though Melissa James (1:09.97) lost a searing 100 breaststroke duel to Liverpool’s Carly Jones (1:09.72), both ran state qualifying times.
After Wilcoxen, Anderson, Murphy and James finished second (1:44.80) to Liverpool (1:43.91) in the 200 freestyle relay, the Hornets tried to get back to the front in the closing 400 freestyle relay.
Working together, Cameron-Carter, Patrick, Wilcoxen and Anderson posted a time of 3:48.66 – which is exactly what Liverpool did, too, a rare dead heat that did nothing to affect the Hornets’ winning outcome.
