At the conclusion of a fall season full of honors, Liverpool girls swimmer Sydnie Sovinsky recorded a pair of top-10 finishes during the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship meet at Ithaca College.
Also, Alyssa Vadala made a large leap from her qualifying score to make it all the way to the finals in the diving competition, eventually claiming 12th place.
Sovinsky was entered in the 200-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly, but was a lower seed in the 200 butterfly, where she had not swam faster than one minute, 56.52 seconds this season.
Crushing that time, Sovinsky finished in 1:52.76 during Friday’s qualifying round, which put her in ninth place going into the finals, where she improved to eighth place by finishing in 1:53.40 to take eighth place. Pittsford’s Lindsay Stone won in a state-record 1:47.39.
Having swam the 100 butterfly in 58.21 seconds earlier this season, Sovinsky had the 15th-fastest time going into the state meet, where she improved to 56.83 seconds.
Though not going as fast in the finals, Sovinsky’s time of 56.98 seconds put her in ninth place overall. Long Beach’s Kristen Romano not only prevailed, her time of 53.13 seconds broke a 26-year-old state record by more than a full second. Oswego’s Caitlin Gorton was fifth in 56.42 seconds, the best finish by any Section III swimmer in any race.
Vadala, meanwhile, was 34th among 41 divers going into the state meet, but with steady performances, she made it through two different rounds to get to the finals and finished with 445.80 points to get to 12th place. Minisink Valley’s Erin Clifford won with 526.30 points.
Liverpool’s Ali Testone finished 36th in the 100 breaststroke in 1:08.78 and 53rd in the 200 individual medley in 2:15.80. Testone, Sovinsky, Jaida Fox and Maddie Rose swam the 400 freestyle relay in 3:40.58 to qualify 25th for the finals, where they went 3:43.42 to take 26th place.
