The area’s three high school girls swim teams nearly pulled off a clean sweep of the three Section III championship meets on a busy and full Friday.
While Fayetteville-Manlius was repeating its Class A win from 2016, Christian Brothers Academy pulled away with the Class C sectional meet by earning 500 points, well clear of host Skaneateles, who was second with 300 points.
To get it going, the Brothers’ 200-yard medley relay team of Julia Torell, Darien Tompkins, Kaitlyn Bushnell and Lauren Kelly finished in one minute, 52.08, winning that race and also qualifying for the Nov. 17-18 state championship meet at Ithaca College.
Then Katie Toole and Katelyn Wendt went 1-2 in the 200 freestyle, Toole prevailing in 2:05.98 as Wendt got second place in 2:09.20. It was the same in the 50 freestyle, Kelly winning in 25.67 seconds and Bushnell (25.87 seconds) claiming the runner-up spot.
Torell had already qualified for the state meet in the 100 butterfly, but she won here by improving her season-best time to 59.01 seconds and Tompkins joined her in reaching the state meet, finishing second in 59.70 seconds. Kelly would prevail in the 100 breaststroke in 1:08.27, also earning a state meet berth
Toole earned a second title when she swam the 500 freestyle in 5:41.93, edging out teammate Abby Poore (5:41.97) by four-hundredths of a second. Tompkins went 1:03.25 to finish second in the 100 backstroke as Torell got fourth place in 1:04.96 and Alyssa Nicita was seventh and Grace O’Connor 10th.
Bushnell was second in the 100 freestyle in 57.10 seconds behind Skaneateles’ Lily Buchholz (a school and pool-record 53.86 seconds), but helped Kelly, Torell and Tompkins win the 400 freestyle relay in 3:52.10.
Toole, Wendt, Ally Howard and Anna Ziemba were third in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:50.01 as Ziemba was fourth in the 100 breaststroke (1:15.89) and Poore was sixth in the 200 individual medley in 2:32.64.
Meanwhile, at Nottingham High School, Jamesville-DeWitt engaged with New Hartford in a close battle for Class B sectional honors, but the Red Rams settled for second place with 364 points behind the Spartans, who won with 404 points.
Despite the runner-up team finish, J-D made some history in the 400 freestyle relay. Amelia Hesler, Alexis Phillips, Emma Galletta and Mackenzie Moore finished in 3:37.12, which broke a 21-year-old sectional record of 3:37.77 that J-D set back in 1996.
Individually, Hesler won the 200 IM in 2:12.11 to just beat the state qualfiying standard of 2:12.84. In the 500 freestyle, Hesler got second place in 5:11.29 and also reached the state meet in that event, though New Hartford’s Kim MacDonald (5:08.72) prevailed.
Phillips tore to a state-qualifying time of 1:56.91 in the 200 freestyle, but was second to New Hartford’s Alexis Falvo (1:55.56) as Sawyer Parker was fourth in 2:03.64. The 100 freestyle had a similar finish, Phillips going 53.82 seconds to reach the state meet and Falvo (52.61) prevailing.
Phillips and Hesler paired with Emma Galletta and Mackenzie Moore as J-D, in 1:39.18, dominated the 200 freestyle relay. J-D also finished fifth in the 200 medley relay in 2:02.65.
Galletta was second in the 50 freestyle in 25.26 seconds, inches behind Watertown’s Sarah Kilburn (25.22) as Moore was third in 25.34 seconds. Galletta added a fourth-place finish in the 100 butterfly in 1:02.99 as Emily Ninestein was fourth (1:03.28) and Moore fifth (1:04.33) in the 100 backstroke. Audrey Norden was ninth in the 100 breaststroke.
