Part of the reason why the Skaneateles girls swim does so well in post-season events like the Section III championships is the fact that it races against most of the area’s top squads during the regular season, even if it affects the won-loss record.
Another example of this approach was last Tuesday’s meet against visiting Cicero-North Syracuse, the undefeated front-runners in the CNY Counties League. Though it won few events, the Lakers did compete throughout its 102-80 loss to the Northstars.
Rachel Teixeira, in fact, won the first individual race on the slate, taking two minutes, 8.32 seconds to beat the C-NS challengers in the 200-yard freestyle. Much later in the meet, Teixeira prevailed again, swimming the 100 backstroke in 1:09.36.
Skaneatlees only won one of the three relays, having Teixeira, Haley Buchholz, Leah King and Taylor Hill go 4:10.09 in the 400 freestyle relay to finish first there. C-NS won the other two relays, the 200 medley (1:59.95) and 200 freestyle (1:50.59), and saw Lauren Thorne win two individual events, going 2:22.69 in the 200 individual medley and 1:04.81 to win the 100 butterfly.
Another CNYCL opponent, Baldwinsville, would visit on Thursday night, and this time King, Buchholz, Teixeira and Tara Chalupnicki would each win individual races, even though the Bees defeated the Lakers 97-80.
In fact, King prevailed twice, going 26.63 seconds to beat the field in the 50 freestyle and then earning first place in the 100 butterfly in 1:05.54, right before Teixeira got to the top in the 100 freestyle in 1:00.22.
As for Buchholz, she had to wait until the 100 backstroke for her title, needing 1:11.32 to finish in front. Chalupnicki picked up 165.75 points in the diving event as Teixeira, Leah King, Grace King and Rose Keady roared to victory in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:53.19. A tight 400 freestyle relay saw Teixeira, Keady, Hill and Leah King finish in 4:07.02, but B’ville (4:06.96) was just ahead of them.
In another big meet next Wednesday night, Skaneateles visits Auburn, looking to improve upon its 4-5 record attained against all that top competition.
