Come Thursday night, the Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse boys swim teams have a head-to-head clash at the Le Moyne College pool – but they’ve already competed against each other.
The Warriors and Northstars got together for last Saturday’s inaugural Salt City Athletic Conference championships at Nottingham High School, and earned plenty of glory between them.
In the opening race, the 200-yard medley relay, Liverpool qualified for the March 2-3 state championship meet on Long Island.
Tom Griffin, J.J. Ross, Griffin Merkley and Johannes Vorbach finished in one minute, 39.51 seconds, more than a second quicker than the 1:40.67 state qualifying standard. Another Warriors quartet would finish fourth in 1:45.49.
Yet another state meet standard was beaten in the 200 freestyle relay thanks to the quartet of Griffin, Ross, Curtis Merrick and Matt Geary, who went 1:29.56 to duck under the 1:30.12 standard. Again, a second Warriors side would finish fourth (1:38.57).
Ross went from there to winning the 200 freestyle in 1:48.52, part of a 1-2-3 Liverpool sweep with Griffin O’Neil second in 1:51.05 and Griffin third in 1:52.01. Matt Geary got sixth place and Will Allen was eighth.
Swimming in the 100 backstroke, Griffin put up a fine time of 54.88 seconds and qualified for the state meet in that event, even as he finished second to Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA’s Chris Bushnell, whose winning time of 53.07 seconds broke a school record. Kyle Richardson finished sixth, with Wesley Turverey seventh.
C-NS got its turn at the top in the 50 freestyle, where Sean Payrot, in 22.88 seconds, edged the Warriors’ Curtis Merrick (22.90) for first place as Merkling was third (23.73) and the Northstars’ Eli Ward was fifth in 23.95 seconds.
And the Northstars nearly won the 400 freestyle relay at meet’s end. Payrot, Ward, Payton Connors and Logan Petralia went 3:35.47, second only to Baldwinsville’s victorious 3:26.38 as Liverpool settled for fifth place.
Payrot took fourth place in the 100 freestyle in 51.13 seconds, just behind O’Neil (51.03) in third place as Liverpool also had Merrick in sixth place and Vorbach in seventh place.
Ross, in the 500 freestyle, was second in 5:11.68, only trailing Baldwinsville’s John Licciardello (5:04.32) as Alex Wagner was sixth for Liverpool and Justin Mancuso finished eighth. Vorbach was second in the 100 breaststroke in 1:02.83 behind B’ville’s Nick Schultz, who won in 1:00.75, with Dan Stapleton ninth and Brandon Nguyen 10th.
Geary was third in the 100 butterfly in 1:00.20, while Nguyen finished eighth. Kyle Richardson finished fifth in the 200 individual medley in 2:15.88, with Lachlan Eicholzer seventh in 2:23.11 as Evan Kline was ninth and Ryan Wilhelm 10th.
Payrot, Ward, Connors and Adam Rein get fifth place in the 200 medley relay in 1:49.04, right before Connors gained fifth place in the 200 freestyle in 1:58.38 as Connors also was fourth in the 100 backstroke in 1:00.50. Ward, Petralia, Bruce Hepel and Tanner were fifth in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:39.33.
