Liverpool boys swimmer Nick Burdo has a great sense of timing.
All season long, Burdo had put up tremendous times in a wide variety of races, but when he concentrated on the 100 and 200-yard freestyle for last weekend’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association meet at Ithaca College, he really stepped it up.
Going into the state meet, Burdo had the eighth-fastest time out of 46 competitors in the 100 freestyle with 47.01 seconds.
Here, though, Burdo went nearly a full second faster – 46.37 seconds, to be precise – and that put him third on the qualifying sheet going into the finals. Jamestown’s Matt Marsh led with 46.08 seconds, with St. Anthony’s Sean Cannon posting 46.32 seconds.
With everyone picking up their times, Burdo dipped to 46.05 seconds in the final and beat Cannon (46.24 seconds), and earned the third-place medal. Only Cannon, who won in 45.40 seconds, and Brockport’s Nick Olson, who was second in 45.86 seconds, fared better.
In the 200 freestyle, Burdo entered with a time of 1:45 flat, the 19th-fastest effort out of 63 competitors. But in Friday’s qualifying heat, Burdo improved more than three seconds, to 1:41.43, and was third going into the finals, trailing only Garden City’s Connor Brown (1:40.64) and Ithaca’s Kevin Miller (1:41.43).
In Saturday’s championship race, Burdo didn’t quite go as fast, his time dipping to exactly 1:42, but it still put him sixth overall and third among NYSPHSAA swimmers. Brown won both the state and Federation championships with a clocking of 1:39.34.
Burdo didn’t stop with individual efforts. He also paired with Liam Henry, Matt Petit and Troy Miller in the 200 freestyle relay, where Liverpool, in a time of 1:27.98, improved on its previous best time of 1:28.36 and was ninth going into the finals, just behind Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA in eighth place (1:27.66) and Watertown in ninth place (1:27.91).
Going slightly slower in the finals, Liverpool, in 1:28.43, still finished seventh in the NYSPHSAA portion, with J-D/CBA fourth in a school-record 1:27.08 and Watertown fifth in 1:28.25.
In the 200 medley relay, the Warriors’ quartet of Matt Petit (backstroke), Connor Thiel (breaststroke), Troy Miller (butterfly) and Liam Henry (freestyle) rose from 30th place going into the meet (1:40.40) to 18th place with 1:39.27 in the qualifying heat. Then, in the finals, it posted 1:40.40 again and was 14th in the NYSPHSAA division.
Miller, on his own, had a tremendous effort in the 100 butterfly, improving from 52.14 seconds to 52.10 and qualifying 10th for the finals after entering the meet in 15th place, and then taking eighth in the NYSPHAA final in 52.52 seconds. Thiel finished 35th in the 100 breaststroke in 1:01.19.
