Intense practices had marked the Liverpool boys swim team’s lead-up to its biggest regular-season meet of the winter.
And when the Warriors made that trip to face the combined Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA side on Thursday night, it was ready, saving its best work for the latter stages of the competition and pulling away for a 99.5-86.5 victory over the Red Rams.
Both sides led their respective leagues – Liverpool the CNY Counties League, J-D/CBA the Onondaga High School League. And they knew that these races would serve as a small preview of the overall Section III championships a few weeks down the road.
Needing points right away, the Warriors began its relay sweep in the 200-yard medley relay, where the quartet of Tom Griffin, J.J. Ross, Connor Thiel and Luke Rogers posted a solid time of one minute, 49.46 seconds, enough to hold off J-D/CBA (1:51.29) as the Warriors also got the third (1:53.87) and fourth (1:54.57) for valuable points.
Then it was Nick Burdo’s turn. Having previously set the pool record in the 200 freestyle with 1:44.98, Burdo went after it and, by 0.02 seconds, missed out, still winning the race in exactly 1:45 as Petit, in 1:52.99, beat out J-D/CBA’s Casey Sawyer (1:55.22) for second place.
Thiel was second in the 200 individual medley in 2:10.75, watching the Rams’ Kevin Potocki pull away to win in 2:01.51, before J-D/CBA took the top four diving spots, led by Alex Dieroff (263.95 points) and Matt Wanamaker (260.45 points), with the Warriors’ Lukas McIlroy and Tom Brancato fifth and sixth, respectively.
From there, though, Liverpool dominated the top spots, losing just once, in the 100 freestyle, where Cory Knapp, who had already taken the 50 freestyle in 21.91 seconds, completed a sprint sweep by winning in 48.66 seconds. Liam Henry was second in both events for the Warriors, going 22.90 seconds in the 50 free and 49.80 seconds in the 100 free.
Troy Miller ignited the run as he swam the 100 butterfly in 52.91 seconds, well clear of Potocki (54.15 seconds) in the runner-up spot, while Burdo returned in the 500 freestyle and, in 5:12.47, held off the Rams’ Spencer Schultz (5:15.48) for another victory as James Hunter finished fourth.
Matt Petit went to his specialty, the 100 backstroke, and took the victory in 59.67 seconds, while J-D/CBA’s Dan McGann was second and the Warriors’ Griffin O’Neill was third in 1:03.07.
Still, the meet was close, Liverpool up by just three points, until the 100 breaststroke, where Thiel pulled away to win in 1:03.64 and Miller, in 1:06.26, completed a valuable 1-2 sweep.
Also, Liverpool swept the other relay events. Burdo, Miller, Henry and Petit sped to victory in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:30.24, just 0.02 seconds off the pool record, with the Rams (1:30.95) close behind. Then, in the 400 freestyle relay, that same Liverpool quartet went 3:21.84, gradually getting away from J-D/CBA (3:25.59) and earning yet another first-place finish.
