Three races remained in Thursday night’s Section III Class A championship meet, and the Liverpool boys swim team still trailed in the race for top honors.
Then, with a series of high finishes in both relays and individual events, the Warriors erased that deficit and repeated as sectional champions with a total of 399.5 points, holding off Watertown (361 points) and Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA (355 points) for first place.
Liverpool entered the night far back of CBA/J-D, who had swept the top three spots in the sectional Class A diving competition on Feb. 7.
Then it watched as Watertown, who had to drive more than two hours through a fierce winter storm just to get to the meet, won the first three races.
The Cyclones took the 200-yard medley relay in 1:38.37 over the Warriors (1:40.96) in second place. Then Joey Ongkingco claimed the 200 freestyle in 1:48.20 and his Watertown teammate, Andrew Marilley, was victorious in the 200 individual medley in 2:00.46.
But in that 200 IM, Connor Thiel struck for the first time, earning second place in 2:04.36, and setting the table for Nick Burdo to take over in the sprints.
Burdo, who was named the Swimmer of the Meet, matched his season-best time of 21.43 seconds to pull away from J-D/CBA’s Cory Knapp (22.03 seconds and win the 50 freestyle. Two races later, in the 100 freestyle, Burdo rolled to a time of 47.18 seconds and again beat Knapp (48.37 seconds) as Liam Henry secured third place in 48.94 seconds.
In between Burdo’s victories came the 100 butterfly, where Troy Miller sought to break the school record held by his older brother, Chad, of 52.13 seconds. As he pulled away, Troy Miller zeroed in on the mark and won the race – in 52.14 seconds, missing by 0.01 seconds, but still on top.
Despite all this, and despite passing Watertown, Liverpool, with 232 points, still trailed CBA/J-D, who had 265 points. But the gap started to close in the 200 freestyle relay, where the Warriors’ quartet of Burdo, Miller, Henry and Matt Petit set a pool record with a time of 1:28.36 – and had to, since the Red Rams finished second in 1:28.53.
It was in the 100 backstroke, though, that Liverpool caught up, seeing Petit finish second, in 56.26 seconds, inches behind Marilley (56.12 seconds) as Luke Rogers roared to fourth place in 59.55 seconds and Griffin O’Neill finished fifth in 1:00.60.
Then the Warriors seized the lead for keeps in the 100 breaststroke with a 1-2 finish. Miller and Thiel quickly pulled away from the rest of the finalists and nearly hit the finish line together, Miller winning in 59.52 seconds and Thiel second in 59.63 seconds as both of them advanced to the state championship meet Feb. 27-28 at Ithaca College with those times.
Burdo offered up one more thrilling encore swimming the anchor leg of the 400 freestyle relay. Though Watertown won in a pool-record 3:15.35, Burdo helped the Warriors overtake J-D/CBA and claim second place in 3:17.06 to the Rams’ 3:17.67. All advanced to the state meet.
