With a perfect regular season and Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division title secure, the Liverpool boys swim team still has one bit of business left to make this 2017-18 campaign complete.
The Warriors still remember how Watertown edged them out for the Section III Class A championship a year ago. Payback could come Thursday at Nottingham High School, when the sectional meet takes place again.
Before that, though, Liverpool had to go through one more regular-season meet, hosting Oswego last Thursday night and improving its mark to 11-0 by handling the Buccaneers 100-70.
The Warriors’ top swimmers got together in the closing 400-yard freestyle relay. Tom Griffin, J.J. Ross, Matt Geary and Grffin O’Neil roared to a time of three minutes, 22.33 seconds, right after Griffin went 54.32 seconds in the 100 backstroke.
Curtis Merrick joined Griffin, Ross and Geary in the 200 freestyle relay, where in 1:28.55 the Warriors recorded the fourth-fastest time in the state this season, barely a second behind the 1:27.37 Pittsford has atop the current state standings.
Prior to that, Ross had torn through the 100 butterfly in 54.05 seconds and swam the 200 freestyle in 1:47.86 ahead of O’Neil (1:52.75) and Griffin Merkling (1:55.10), while O’Neil swam the 100 freestyle in 51.27 seconds and Brandon Nguyen posted 52.60 seconds.
Merrick, who swam the 100 backstroke in 58.28 seconds, won the 200 individual medley in 2:07.31 over Nguyen’s 2:11.55.
Julien Brownlow, in 24.50 seconds, pulled away from Jack Andrejko (25.63) and Brodie Powers (26.67) in the 50 freestyle, with A.J. Wagner winning the points in the 100 freestyle in 56.59 seconds. Lachlan Eicholzer was second in the 100 butterfly in 1:01.56.
Will Allen, who was second in the 500 freestyle in 5:27.86 to Oswego’s Casey DeLapp (5:23.99), paired with Nguyen, Josh Foley and Brandon Wilhelm to go 1:42.03 and win the 200 freestyle relay. Dan Stapleton swam the 100 breaststroke in 1:08.15.
Uriy Grabovyy picked up 176.75 points in diving, ahead of Kyle NunnoNorod’s 127.50 points. Then, in Saturday’s sectional Class A diving championships at Nottingham, Grabovyy, with 292.55 points, finished 10th, two spots ahead of Cicero-North Syracuse’s Dan Shaw in 12th place.
Both Grabovyy and Shaw advanced to Wednesday’s overall sectional finals, where the favorites are Jamesville-DeWitt-CBA’s Lucas Dekaney and Ryan Evans, each of whom have already qualified for the state meet.
