Casey Sawyer took the lead, and his Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA boys swimming teammates followed, all the way to a convincing victory in Friday’s Onondaga High School League championship meet at Mexico.
Picking up 616 points, the Red Rams pulled away from the seven-team field. Oswego, with 390.5 points, held off the host Mexico Tigers (381 points) for second place.
In the opening race, the 200 medley relay, Sawyer paired with Corey Knapp, Luca Bebla and Connor Evans as J-D/CBA, in a time of one minute, 46.28 seconds, finished ahead of Mexico (1:50.39) and set the first of several meet records.
Moving to the 100 butterfly, Sawyer did even better. His time of 53.54 seconds broke the Mexico pool record, set an OHSL meet mark and was part of a 1-2 effort by the Rams as Spencer Schultz made it to second place in 57.16 seconds.
Finally, Sawyer was part of J-D/CBA’s 200 freestyle relay effort, pairing with Knapp, Schultz and Jeff Gabriel to set yet another meet record as, in 1:32.58, the Rams beat out Oswego (1:37.32) in second place.
Knapp earned his first victory in the 50 freestyle, going 22.33 seconds (also a meet record) to hold off Oswego’s Dylan Harrington (22.62 seconds) at the line as Gabriel, in 23.55 seconds, earned third place.
But that just set the table for the Rams’ clean sweep in the 100 freestyle. Not only did Knapp win in a meet record-tying 49.59 seconds, Dan McGann made it to second place in 52.84 seconds, just enough to beat out Gabriel (53.27 seconds), who again finished third.
Matt Wanamaker took second place in diving with 515.3 points, with Kyler Harrington third (419.65 points) and Ryan Evans fifth (397.2 points), each of them trailing Mexico star Noah Galluzzo, whose total of 676.0 points set a Section III mark for an 11-dive competition.
More points were piled up in the 100 backstroke, where McGann finished third in 1:00.88, just ahead of Sawyer in fourth place (1:02.81), Bebla in fifth place (1:04.27) and Owen Farchione (1:04.64) in sixth place.
Schultz also finished third in the 200 freestyle in 1:55.40, where Jack Toole was sixth in 2:00.78. Farchione made it to fifth place in the 200 individual medley in 2:24.87.
