Some of the best work the West Genesee boys swim team has done came during a 24-hour stretch where it prevailed in back-to-back meets against the top two sides in the Onondaga High School League.
To start with, the Wildcats hosted Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA Wednesday night, and saw one school record broken by Peter Bowman in diving, along with some big wins in the late going that keyed a 102-84 victory over the Red Rams.
Bowman knew, in diving, he was going up against J-D/CBA’s Ryan Evans and Lucas Dekaney, the top two finishers in the Jan. 21 OHSL championships. So Bowman stepped up and earned 318.30 points, breaking the single-meet school mark to top Evans (288.0 points) and Dekaney (252.3 points).
By then, WG’s Ryan Hagadorn was already in the win column, having gone two minutes, 16.86 seconds to take the 200-yard individual medley, edging out J-D/CBA’s Owen Farchione (2:17.75) for that top spot. A second title would come in the 100 breaststroke, where Hagadorn prevailed in 1:03.28 and Zach Zaonetti was second in 1:09.37.
Nate Gdula and Evan Tuthill went 1-2 in the 50 freestyle, Gdula prevailing in 23.16 seconds and Tuthill getting to second place in 23.43 seconds. They would do the same thing in the 100 freestyle, this time with Gdula going 51.09 seconds and Tuthill (51.29 seconds) a close second.
To win, WG needed to claim the last two relays, and did so. Hagadorn, Gdula, Tuthill and Matt Shoults claimed a tense 200 freestyle relay in 1:34.56, five-hundredths of a second ahead of J-D/CBA’s 1:34.61, while Shoults, Brian Salmons, Ryan McMahon and Cameron Chao got the victory in the 400 freestyle relay in 3:46.42.
Individually, Shoults was second (1:58 flat) to J-D/CBA’s Jeff Gabriel (1:57.82 in a close 200 freestyle, while McMahon was second in the 500 freestyle in 5:39.99. Salmons was third in the 100 breaststroke and Alex Shuron was third in the 100 butterfly.
A day later, the Wildcats swam again, this time in a meet at Mexico, and despite plenty of strong individual efforts from the Tigers, the Wildcats held on to prevail by a 95-91 margin.
It started with Hagadorn, Salmons, Gdula and Tuthill going 1:47.12 to beat Mexico (1:49.85) in the 200 medley relay and endured despite the Tigers getting wins from Dylan Long (200 freestyle, 1:56.04) and Anthony Yost (200 IM, 2:10.90), with Shoults second (1:59.75) in the 200 free.
Moving to the 50 freestyle, Gdula, in 23.27 seconds, was one-hundredth of a second behind Mexico’s Dan Mullen (23.26 seconds) as Tuthill was third in 23.68 seconds, but Bowman won the diving competition with 283.45 points as Adriel Schoeck was second with 222.45 points.
The string of runner-up efforts continued, with Gdula second in the 100 butterfly (1:03.36) and Tuthill, in 51.57 seconds, trailing Mullen (50.48 seconds) in the 100 freestyle, but in the 200 freestyle relay WG gained a crucial victory when Hagadorn, Gdula, Tuthill and Shoults went 1:33.38 to pull away from Mexico (1:36.07) by more than two seconds.
After Salmons finished second (1:04.73) and Keegan Scharoun third (1:05.97) in the 100 backstroke, WG clinched the victory when Hagadorn, for the second day in a row, won the 100 breaststroke, this time finishing in 1:03.83 to hold off Mexico’s John Ocker (1:05.58) for that top spot.
Bowman’s big week wasn’t done. He would go to Saturday’s Syracuse Diving Invitational at Nottingham High School and earn a state meet-qualifying total of 477.80 points, second only to Evans, who gained a big of payback for his loss to Bowman earlier in the week by getting 486.80 points here. Justin Byrne was sixth, with 354.65 points, just ahead o f Schoeck (349.55 points) in seventh place.
With that, WG’s regular season concluded with a 6-2 mark, and its swimmers could start the weeks of preparation for the Section III championships. Bowman, Schoeck and the sectional divers compete Feb. 11, with the other swimmers battling for top honors Feb. 16 and 18, all of it at Nottingham High School.
