Now you can call it a clean sweep.
With a perfect regular season and Section III Class A championship already in the books, the Liverpool boys swim team returned to Nottingham High School Saturday for the sectional state qualifying meet.
And with a total of 342 points, the Warriors claimed the team title and the George Falwell Cup, beating out Watertown, who was second with 281 points. Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA was third with 230 points.
And Liverpool got these points without winning a single event, though it was runner-up seven different times, including all three relays.
In the opening event, the 200-yard freestyle relay, the Warriors’ quartet of Tom Griffin, J.J. Ross, Griffin Merkling and Johannes Vorbach improved on their sectional meet time to one minute, 38.26 seconds, but trailed J-D/CBA, who won in a school-record 1:37.33.
Griffin got challenge in both of the sprints, tearing to a season-best 21.49 seconds in the 50 freestyle, but finishing second to Cooperstown’s Ted Mebust, who prevailed in 21.43 seconds and was named Swimmer of the Meet as he also took the 100 backstroke in 51.38 seconds.
Before that, Griffin went for the title in the 100 freestyle and got within inches of winning. In 47.89 seconds, he was edged by South Jefferson’s William Lowe, who got 47.88 seconds.
Ross had his own pair of runner-up finishes. In the 200 freestyle, Ross posted 1:46.25, behind Weedsport star Macauley Kolonko, who pulled away to win in 1:43.81. Then, in the 100 butterfly, Ross would finish in 53.45 seconds, behind J-D’s Spencer Schultz, who posted 53.02 seconds.
Moving to the 200 freestyle relay, Griffin, Curtis Merrick, Brandon Nguyen and Matt Geary went 1:29.06, just behind Watertown’s winning 1:28.99. Ross was paired with Merrick, Geary and Griffin O’Neil to go 3:18.91 in the 400 freestyle relay, again with Watertown (3:15.90) on top.
In the 100 backstroke, Merrick finished in 55.57 seconds, the same time as J-D/CBA’s Owen Farchione as they battled for third place, with Merrick also sixth in the 200 individual medley in 2:05.04.
O’Neil was fourth in the 200 freestyle in 1:48.61 and fifth in the 500 freestyle in 5:02.50, with Merkling fourth in the 200 IM in 2:03.88, more than two seconds ahead of his best time of the season as he added a seventh-place time of 5:03.47 in the 500 freestyle.
Vorbach, with a time of 1:03.48, made it to sixth place in the 100 breaststroke as he also got seventh place in the 100 butterfly in 57.90 seconds, just ahead of Kyle Richardson (58.02 seconds) in eighth place.
Now all of the top Liverpool swimmers would get two weeks to prepare for the March 2-3 New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships at Nassau County Aquatic Center on Long Island.
At this same sectional state qualifier, Cicero-North Syracuse claimed ninth place with 89 points. The Northstars’ Sean Payrot broke the 50-second mark in the 100 freestyle and finished sixth overall in 49.95 seconds.
In the 200 freestyle relay Payrot, Connor Rogalia, Payton Connors and Eli Ward improved more than a second to 1:30.97, missing out on the state qualifying standards by less than a second. Also, Payrot earned an eighth-place finish in the 50 freestyle, clocking 22.63 seconds
Payrot, Ward, Connors and Adam Rein were ninth in the 200 medley relay, improving its time to 1:46.50. Connors was 10th in the 100 backstroke, going under a minute for the first time this winter as he finished in 59.20 seconds, while also earning 11th place in the 200 IM in 2:10.37
