In none of the 11 races contested during Friday night’s Section III Class A girls swimming championship meet at Nottingham High School did Fayetteville-Manlius finish on top.
Yet when all the results were tallied, the Hornets were sectional champions, with 420 points, well clear of runner-up Cicero-North Syracuse, who had 351 points to edge out Liverpool (338.5 points) in third place.
The sectional meet reflected F-M’s approach throughout its undefeated run to the CNY Counties League regular-season title – namely, accumulate high finishes in every single event to overcome the up-and-down efforts of its rivals.
Right away, the Hornets got on the board in the 200-yard medley relay as Addie Antshel, Grace Bang, Hannah Kellog and Cara Campell finished third in one minute, 56.48 seconds. Liverpool won in 1:52.91.
That consistency continued in the 200 freestyle, where F-M’s Abbey Harris finished third in 2:03.12, and the 200 individual medley, where Antshel returned to get her own third-place finish in 2:21.68.
Campell needed 26.04 seconds for a fifth-place finish in the 50 freestyle, with Amelia Krouse close behind as she got sixth place in 26.22 seconds. Then Antshel struck again with a sixth-place clocking of 1:04.92 in the 100 butterfly.
Krouse returned in the 100 freestyle, rising to third place in 56.43 seconds, while Harris finished fourth in 56.72 seconds. Kellog gave the Hornets more points with her sixth-place finish in the 500 freestyle in 5:39.35.
When the second relay, the 200 freestyle, rolled around, F-M had Krouse, Kellog, Harris and Hannah McMichael gain third place in 1:43.12, close behind C-NS (1:41.98) and Auburn (1:42.78).
Even more Hornets swimmers joined in the effort when Christina Burnam went 1:05.97 in the 100 backstroke and Catherine Ottaviano notched sixth place in the 100 breaststroke in 1:14.76 behind Bang’s fifth-place time of 1:14.14.
And to clinch the sectional title, F-M finished second in the 400 freestyle relay, with Krouse, Kellog, McMichael and Harris finishing in 3:47.64, a mark only Liverpool (3:42.77) topped.
All of this followed Thursday’s sectional Class A diving championships, where Erin Wind, with 394.95 points, finished second to Liverpool’s Alyssa Vadala (451.60 points). Francesca Femia was fifth, earning 373.65 points, while Riley Miller, with 343.20 points, claimed ninth place.
For leading F-M to 9-0 regular-season record and post-season glory, Hornets head coach Tim Gallivan was named Class A Coach of the Year, but he – and his Hornets – were not yet done with the winning part.
Two days later, in Sunday’s sectional state qualifier, F-M prevailed again, seizing the George Falwell Cup in the closest race in years by earning 231 points, just enough to fend off Liverpool (223 points) and Jamesville-DeWitt (219 points), while C-NS settled for fourth place with 199 points.
A steady stream of top-10 finishes allowed the Hornets to overcome the victories that the Warriors and Red Rams attained in races. It also helped that Wind finished third in diving with 417.3 points as Femia got 368.4 points for ninth place and Miller was 10th with 365.7 points.
Antshel needed 2:20.13 to move to fourth place in the 200 IM, the best individual finish of any Hornet. Meanwhile, F-M saw Campell, McMichael, Krouse and Harris go 1:42.98 in the 200 freestyle relay to get third place behind J-D (1:40.72) and Auburn (1:42.49), and clinched the Falwell Cup when Kellog joined Krouse, McMichael and Harris to help F-M get third place in the 400 freestyle relay in 3:46.42.
