Even tough another Section III Class A championship eluded the Liverpool boys swim team, it gained an even bigger prize just two days later.
The overall sectional meet Saturday closely mirrored Thursday’s Class A battle, with one big difference – this time it was the Warriors, not Watertown, on top when all was done, and so Liverpool got possession of the George Falwell Cup.
It helped, no doubt, that the addition of Class B and C teams took away some of the Cyclones’ production, but Watertown still had 271 points, a number that Liverpool, with 279 points, managed to beat as Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA finished third with 256 points.
Action on Saturday began in the morning, during the diving competition. Liverpool gained 17 valuable points when Brennan Matthews finished fourth with 426.05 points and Jesse Hartwell got 15th place with 245.40 points. Watertown did not get a single point in that event.
From there, the Warriors’ task was to match whatever the Cyclones did, starting in the 200 medley relay, where J.J. Ross, Griffin O’Neil, Dan Stapleton and James Hunter got a time of one minute, 43.16 seconds to finish fourth as Watertown got third place, a two-point difference.
Then O’Neill took 10th place in 1:53.07 and Matt Geary (1:49.99) finish ninth, just ahead of two Watertown swimmers, Connor Way and David Saunders, who were 11th and 12th, respectively. That, plus Tyler Hyde’s 15th-place finish, meant 18 points for the Warriors, 11 points for the Cyclones.
Ross went 2:05.39 to place third in the 200 individual medley, while Curtis Merrick was fourth in 2:06.45, meaning 31 points to Watertown’s 13 from sixth-place finish by Nate Carlos. This made up for the 50 freestyle, where the Warriors only had five points and the Cyclones got 33, mostly from Maclean Crossley’s victory in 20.37 seconds.
More ground was gained by Liverpool in the 100 butterfly thanks to Ross taking fourth place in 55.10 seconds and Geary finishing sixth in 57.23 seconds, adding to 28 points, while Watertown only had nine.
Tom Griffin entered the picture in the 100 freestyle, qualifying for the March 3-4 state meet on Long Island by finishing second in 47.86 seconds to Crossley (45.64 seconds), while Hunter finished 14th in 52.24 seconds. In the 500 freestyle, O’Neil finished eighth in 5:08.22, with Hyde 12th in 5:18.81.
Now Liverpool had a comfortable lead, and would see its 200 freestyle relay quartet of Griffin, Geary, Merrick and Hunter go 1:29.96 to beat the state qualifying standard of 1:30.21, even if it meant second place behind Watertown’s 1:28.43.
Not content with that, Griffin advanced to the state meet when his 100 backstroke time of 53.67 went under the 54.82-second standard by more than a full second. Griffin was second to Cooperstown’s Ted Mebust in 51.90 seconds as Merrick took fifth place in 56.66 seconds and Kyle Richardson (1:00.71) was 11th.
Once Stapleton (1:07.04) and Wesley Turverey (1:07.17) finished 12th and 13th, respectively, in the 100 breaststroke, Liverpool had worked its total to 245 points. Watertown had 231 points, which meant that, even if the Cyclones won the closing 400 freestyle relay, the Warriors, so long as it finished fifth or better, would prevail.
Indeed, Watertown did win in 3:14.79 and got the maximum 40 points. But with Ross, Griffin, Geary and Merrick in top form, the Warriors finished second in 3:18.09 and qualified for the state meet while, at the same time, laying claim to the Falwell Cup.
Cicero-North Syracuse finished seventh with 106 points, seeing its 200 medley relay team of Payton Connors, Nate Ancona, Owen Flaherty and Steve Cooley shatter the school record of 1:47.57 it set two days earlier, this time finishing in 1:46.41 for sixth place.
Yet another school mark was set in the 200 freestyle relay as Ancona, Cooley, Eli Ward and Sean Payrot improved from 1:33.97 to 1:33.17 and took seventh place. Connors, Ward, Payrot and Nick Engell were ninth in the 400 freestyle, improving its best time by more than two seconds to 3:32.78.
Individually for the Northstars, Connors had his best finish in the 100 backstroke where he won the consolation final in 1:00.22. Ancona was 11th in the 200 IM, improving his time to 2:13.30, while Connors got 15th place. Engell was 16th in the 500 freestyle and Ancona was 16th in the 100 butterfly.
