With a victory in the last race of the Section III girls swim season, Jamesville-DeWitt earned the prestigious George Falwell Cup.
The sectional state qualifying meet held Sunday at Nottingham High School featured a terrific duel at the top between J-D and Class A sectional champion Fayetteville-Manlius, with Christian Brothers Academy close behind.
Ultimately, the team title came down to the last event, the 400-yard freestyle relay. And J-D, who entered the race four points behind the Hornets, got to the front.
Amelia Hesler, Mackenzie Moore, Emma Galletta and Alexis Phillips posted a time of three minutes, 38.66 seconds, earning 40 points as F-M’s Lindsay Mathews, Sasha Brown, Cara Campell and Hannah Kellogg were third in 3:45.39, earning 32 points.
This left the Red Rams with 259 points, just ahead of F-M’s total of 255 points as CBA (212 points) got third place. And it more than made up for J-D finishing second to New Hartford in the Class B sectional meet two days earlier.
It was the Brothers getting the first win of the day with its own spectacular effort in the 200 medley relay. CBA’s quartet of Darien Tompkins, Lauren Kelly, Julia Torell and Kaitlyn Bushnell posted 1:51.36 to break their own sectional Class C record of 1:52.08 and win the race as F-M was fifth in 1:56.08.
In the 200 individual medley, Hesler prevailed in 2:11.27 as Mathews got F-M a fourth-place finish in 2:16.32 and Addie Antshel was sixth in 2:19.64. Later in the meet, Hesler held off New Hartford’s Kim MacDonald, 5:13.18 to 5:15.49, to win the 500 freestyle. Mathews took sixth place in 5:25.92.
Hesler joined Moore, Phillips and Galletta to go 1:39.26 in the 200 freestyle relay, again getting close to the two-year-old sectional record of 1:38.99 J-D set. F-M had Campell, Brown, Kellogg and Michelle Sipple finish second in 1:41.28 and also qualified for the state meet to take place Nov. 17-18 at Ithaca College.
Moore had her own win in the the 50 freestyle in 25.08 seconds, edging Auburn’s Kennedy Wilson (25.14) as Galletta was fifth in 25.68 seconds and Kelly was sixth in 25.79 seconds.
CBA went 1-2 in the 100 butterfly, Torell winning in 59.36 seconds and Tompkins getting the runner-up spot in 1:00.46. Antshel was fifth in 1:02.06 as Galletta (1:02.73) beat out Kellogg (1:03.46) for seventh place. Tompkins also was third in the 100 backstroke in 1:02.76 as J-D’s Emily Ninestein (1:04.24) got sixth place.
Kelly had her best chance in the 100 breaststroke, and in 1:08.13 qualified for the state meet, even if she was two-hundredths of a second behind Cicero-North Syracuse’s Brooke Fedi (1:08.11) for the top spot. F-M’s Morgan Kingsley was fifth in 1:11.24 and teammate Katie Ottaviano was sixth in 1:12.12.
Also for J-D, Phillips was second in the 100 freestyle in 54.29 seconds behind New Hartford’s Alexis Falvo (52.67), with Campell getting fourth place in 55.23 seconds. Phillips was third in the 200 freestyle in 1:58.01, with Sawyer Parker eighth in 2:03.01.
CBA’s Sam Lanzafame, heading for the state meet in diving, got second place with 418.70 points behind Oswego’s Laura Bornheimer (430.05) as Riley Miller was sixth for F-M with 395.45 points and J-D’s Lauren Saletsky (385.65 points) was seventh.
