Matt O’Donnell’s long, hard and painful comeback from two broken bones in his leg took more than a year, but all the hard work paid off.
O’Donnell led West Genesee’s boys swim team to a fifth-place finish in Thursday night’s Section III Class A championship meet at Liverpool High School.
The Wildcats had 189 points, watching as Liverpool, at its home venue, rallied late to win with 399.5 points, holding off Watertown (361 points) and Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA (355 point). Oswego was fourth with 233 points.
Just 20 months ago, in June 2013, O’Donnell was fresh off strong freshman and sophomore campaigns with WG’s swim team. But in a basketball game at Pine Grove Health and Country Club, O’Donnell snapped the fibula and tibia in his left leg.
Several surgeries followed, not just to insert a metal rod to hold the bones together, but to ward off infections that, if untreated, could have led to a severed leg.
It took three months for O’Donnell to start walking again, the scars on his leg from his injury quite visible. But when he came back to swim his junior year, the toes on his left foot could not curl, so he had to start with just his right foot.
Though another operation helped ease nerve damage and got rid of those hammer toes, O’Donnell still is at a disadvantage every time he starts a race, and also when he makes turns.
Despite all this, O’Donnell nearly qualified for the state meet a year ago, and came into this year’s sectional Class A meet sporting a top time of 55.54 seconds in his best event, the 100-yard butterfly.
Needing to go 53.95 seconds to meat the qualifying standard and advance to the state meet at Ithaca College later this month, O’Donnell could not quite pull it off, finishing fourth in 55.37 seconds as Liverpool’s Troy Miller won in 52.14 seconds.
But WG had already recorded a better finish in the 200 medley relay, where O’Donnell, paired with Nate Gdula, Daniel Pesci and Sean Hagadorn, got to third place in 1:45.88. Only Watertown (1:38.37) and Liverpool (1:40.96) fared better.
And long after the 100 fly was done, O’Donnell made a big push in the 100 backstroke and, with a time of 58.65 seconds, rose all the way to third place. Watertown’s Andrew Marilley won in 54.12 seconds as Liverpool’s Matt Petit (56.26 seconds) got second place.
Hagadorn, aiming to reach the state meet in the 100 breaststroke, got within a second of that standard, but still took third place in 1:02.30 behind the Liverpool tandem of Miller (59.52 seconds) and Connor Thiel (59.63 seconds).
Moving to Saturday’s state qualifier at SUNY-Cortland, the Wildcats would finish seventh, with 109 points, as Liverpool (328 points) pulled away from Watertown (247 points) and J-D/CBA (232.5 points) to take the George Falwell Cup.
O’Donnell, Hagadorn, Gdula and Pesci swam the 200 medley relay in 1:45.11, third behind Liverpool and Cooperstown, while Hagadorn, on his own, again took third in the 100 breaststroke in 1:02.-2, again with Miller (1:00.97) and Thiel (1:01.79) in front of him.
O’Donnell, attempting one more time to qualify for the state meet in the 100 freestyle, could not do so, settling for fourth place in 55.86 seconds. He also finished sixth in the 100 backstroke in 59.35 seconds.
