Just a few successful events separated the Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA boys swim team from toppling Liverpool and winning the big prize during Thursday night’s Section III Class A championship.
But down the stretch, the Warriors piled up points in the 100 backstroke and 100 breaststroke, and beat the Red Rams head-to-head in a pair of relays, all of which swung the meet in Liverpool’s favor.
Ultimately, J-D/CBA picked up 355 points, edged out for that runner-up spot by Watertown (361 points), who won five races. Liverpool, competing at its home facility, took the team title with 399.5 points as Fayetteville-Manlius (122 points) earned eighth place.
Going into the night, the Rams had the lead because Alex Dieroff, Matt Wanamaker and Kyler Harrington had pulled off a 1-2-3 sweep of the sectional Class A diving competition five days earlier. They also arrived with plenty of shaved heads after team members got rid of their locks at a party earlier in the week.
But when the races started, things began to change. Watertown, despite having to take more than two hours to get to Liverpool due to bad weather conditions, won the first three events –the 200 medley relay, plus victories from Joey Ongkingco in the 200 freestyle and Andrew Marilley in the 200 individual medley.
Twice, Cory Knapp squared off with Liverpool’s Nick Burdo in the sprints. Each time, Knapp finished second, going 22.03 seconds in the 50 freestyle as Burdo won in 21.43 seconds and Kevin Potocki, in 22.44 seconds, finished third.
The same thing happened in the 100 freestyle, where Knapp went 48.37 seconds, but that trailed Burdo, who went 47.18 seconds on his way to being named the Swimmer of the Meet.
In an exciting 200 freestyle relay, J-D/CBA, who was not yet qualified for the state meet in that event, did so here, going 1:28.53 and requiring Liverpool to set a pool record of 1:28.36 to finish in front.
Later, in the 400 freestyle relay, the Rams battled with Liverpool for second place behind Watertown’s 3:15.35. Though J-D/CBA could not hang on as the Warriors got the runner-up spot in 3:17.06, it did finish in 3:17.67 and, again, will send that relay squad to Ithaca College for the state meet at the end of this month.
Casey Sawyer, in the 100 butterfly, could not match his state-qualifying time of 53.54 seconds from the OHSL meet on Jan. 3, going 53.88 seconds here, which landed him in third place behind Ongkingco (52.87 seconds) and Liverpool’s Troy Miller, who won in 52.14 seconds.
Spencer Schultz went 5:10.32 in the 500 freestyle, gaining fourth place. Jack Toole was seventh in the 200 freestyle in 1:57.50, just ahead of Spencer Schultz and Dan McGann, who added his own sixth-place effort in the 100 backstroke.
F-M got some tremendous efforts, too. Chris Rettinger placed fifth in the 100 freestyle in 48.94 seconds, just missing out on the time (48.76 seconds) needed to advance to the state meet, and would also take fourth place in the 100 breaststroke in 1:02.27.
The Hornets’ Tiberiu Mihalia didn’t race in the finals of the 200 IM, but his time of 2:16.58 put him in fourth place by the time everyone had raced.
