CAMILLUS – Though there would not be any Section III or state championship honors to pursue this winter, West Genesee’s Justin Byrne still took the top prize in the Feb. 20 Salt City Athletic Conference Invitational.
Byrne’s total of 490.85 points allowed him to hold off Fayetteville-Manlius’ Connor Gleasman in a close race for the individual title. Mexico’s Kian Long was third with 423.40 points.
All told, five of the 11 competitors were Wildcats as Bryan Reichert, who finished seventh with 371.15 points, led the rest of WG’s representatives.
Parker McIlroy took eighth place with 360.75 points, just ahead of the 358.25 from Aiden Burlingame, while Kyle Collins landed in 10th place with 288.70 points.
All of this preceded WG’s season finale last Friday against Cicero-North Syracuse, where the Wildcats had to battle until the final race on the card to defeat the Northstars 90-83 and improve to 3-4 overall.
Heading into the 400-yard freestyle relay, WG only led by a point, 80-79, but got clear helped by the quartet of Alex Shuron, Keegan Scharoun, Joe McManus and Jack Iles, who finished in three minutes, 47.74 seconds, well clear of C-NS’s second-place 4:12.18.
Scharoun tore to a time of 57.38 seconds in his specialty, the 100 backstroke, as Shuron, in 56.12 seconds, edged the Northstars’ John Harbaugh (56.88) to win the 100 butterfly.
Iles had already prevailed in the 500 freestyle in 5:55.71 to the 6:03.32 from the Northstars’ Noah Ritchie. And in the 100 breaststroke, Matt Barrington, in 1:10.36, edged the 1:10.57 from C-NS’s Connor Burke.
Byrne, earning 258.65 points in diving, was just ahead of the 245.80 from Reichert as McIlroy got third place with exactly 200 points.
Angus Tarolli nearly won the 200 freestyle, his 2:15.31 just behind the 2:15 flat from Ritchie. Scharoun was second in the 50 freestyle in 23.70 seconds as McManus finished third in the 100 freestyle in 54.89 seconds.
