A slow start would not thwart the West Genesee boys swim team in Wednesday night’s match against Cicero-North Syracuse at the Le Moyne College pool.
Instead, the Wildcats started piling up first and second-place finishes and kept that up until the late stages, which turned an early deficit into a 96-88 victory over the Northstars.
Before C-NS went in front, though, WG was victorious in the opening 200-yard medley relay, where Ryan Hagadorn, Brian Salmons, Nate Gdula and Evan Tuthill posted a time of one minute, 47.47 seconds to beat the Northtars’ 1:50.04.
From there, the Wildcats had to wait until the 50 freestyle for a top-two finish, but swept those spots as Gdula won in 23.08 seconds and Tuthill got second place in 23.88 seconds. Then, in the diving competition, Peter Bowman won with 268.6 points to beat out Adriel Schoeck’s total of 211.9 points.
To complete his sprint sweep, Gdula had to go 50.98 seconds in the 100 freestyle to beat C-NS’s Steve Cooley (53.43 seconds), this after Alex Searle got second place in the 100 butterfly in 1:07.49. Ryan McMahon was second (5:43.66) to the Northstars’ Nick Engell (5:36.48) in the 500 freestyle.
C-NS won the next two races, too, though Gdula, Tuthill, Hagadorn and Cameron Chao went 1:36.31 in the 200 freestyle relay, just behind the Northstars’ 1;35.56, and Salmons got a time of 1:05.04 in the 100 backstroke behind C-NS’s Payton Connors, who won in 1:01.71.
Needing points in the last two races, WG got them, first with Hagadorn winning the 100 breaststroke in 1:06.41 over Zach Zoanetti (1:10.31) and then by going 1-2 in the closing 400 freestyle relay to get the team win.
Chao, Salmons, Matt Shoults and Keegan Scharoun finished in 3:45.67 as Matt Shields, Zach Walker, Carl Bargabos and Jackson Craig edged C-NS by one-hundredth of a second, 4:15.48 to 4:15.49, for the runner-up spot.
Having improved to 2-1 on the season, WG would host 3-0 Baldwinsville on Wednesday before they hit the holiday break.
