One quirk of the area high school swim season is that the two most important meets of the season are less than 48 hours apart.
So just after competing in the Section III Class A championships, boys swim teams from Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA and Fayetteville-Manlius quickly shifted the attention to Saturday’s sectional state qualifier, also held at Nottingham High School.
With the George Falwell Cup on the line, J-D/CBA improved upon its fourth-place sectional effort, passing Baldwinsville to earn 230 points for third place as Liverpool won with 342 points and Watertown was second with 280 points. F-M got 84.5 points for 11th place.
Two big changes from the sectional meet was the way some events played out, including the diving competition where, in this instance, J-D/CBA/s Ryan Evans got the best of rival Lucas Dekaney.
Both had already qualified for the March 2-3 state meet at Nassau County Aquatic Center on Long Island, but here Evans, with his total of 459.45 points, beat Dekaney (458.45 points) by a single point after losing by less than a point in the Class A meet.
Another difference was that J-D/CBA was victorious in the 200-yard medley relay, having taken second place to Liverpool in the Class A portion.
Chris Bushnell, David Chen and Spencer Schultz built up enough of a lead so that anchor Owen Farchione could hold off Warriors star Tom Griffin and help the Red Rams post a school-record one minute, 37.33 seconds to Liverpool’s 1:38.26.
Having lost to F-M’s Tanner Eisenhut in the Class A 200 individual medley, Bushnell didn’t let that happen again, prevailing in 1:59.37, while Eisenhut posted 2:00.63, exactly the standard to join Bushnell in advancing to the state met.
Also, Eisenhut reached the state meet in the 100 breaststroke, where in a time of 1:01.16 he beat the standard of 1:01.20 by four-hundredths of a second and was runner-up in the race to Baldwinsville’s Nick Schultz, who won in 1:00.23.
All season long, Bushnell had dominated the 100 backstroke, and he improved by more than half a second in this race to 53.22 seconds, yet still finished second as Cooperstown standout Ted Mebust won in 51.38 seconds on his way to being named the Swimmer of the Meet (he also won the 50 freestyle). Farchione finished third in 55.57 seconds.
Schultz starred, too, thanks to his victory in the 100 butterfly. Liverpool’s J.J. Ross had beat him in this event in the Class A meet, but here Schultz went 53.02 seconds and defeated Ross (53.45) for the top spot, while Farchione was fourth in 54.91 seconds.
Earlier, in the 200 freestyle, Schultz a time of 1:47.14, finished third behind Ross (1:46.25) and Weedsport’s Macauley Kolonko, who won in 1:43.81. Each of them is going to the state meet in this race.
J-D/CBA just missed reaching the state meet in the 200 freestyle relay as Bushnell, Schultz, Farchione and Conlan Rourke finished fourth in 1:30.33, but 1:30.12 was needed. F-M had Eisenhut, Mike Araujo, Nate Montgomery and Nico Foster finish ninth in 1:35.23.
F-M also was 12th in the 200 medley relay in 1:48.45 as Richard Wan, Chris Ziobro, Tristan Wellner and Isaiah Haywood took part, with Eisenhut joining Montgomery, Araujo and Wan to get ninth place in the 400 freestyle relay in a season-best 3:35.31. Earlier, Haywood had finished 15th in diving with 291.25 points.
