If what took place in the Jan. 18 Salt City Athletic Conference championships offers a hint at what’s ahead, the Baldwinsville boys swim team might have quite a memorable post-season run.
Already winners of eight consecutive meets, the Bees arrived at Nottingham High School and proceeded to sweep all of the relays, qualifying two of them for March’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association meet.
The state qualifying standard in the opening 200-yard medley relay was one minute, 40.67 seconds. B’ville promptly had Alex Hiltbrand, John Licciardello, Nick Schultz and Bailey Ludden go 1:40.48 to meet that mark and hold off Liverpool’s 1:42.75.
Then, in the 200 freestyle relay, that same B’ville quartet had not gone faster than 1:30.99 this winter. Here, though, the Bees improved to 1:29.61, more than half a second faster than the 1:30.12 needed for the state meet and, again, just ahead of Liverpool, who finished in 1:30.23.
Only in the 400 freestyle relay did the Bees not get to the state meet, but it was close. Ludden, Schultz, Licciardello and Hiltbrand went 3:19.33, less than a second slower than the state qualifying standard of 3:18.87, but one more time enough to leave Liverpool (3:25.95) in the runner-up spot.
Individually, Hiltbrand, already qualified for the state meet in the 100 freestyle, did even better here, going 48.12 seconds to win by more than two seconds over Auburn’s Sam Carbonaro (50.22), while Ludden was third in 50.28 seconds and Schultz (51.26) was eighth.
John Burns put all his energy into the 100 butterfly and, in 57.76 seconds, beat out Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA’s Nathan Chen (58.00) for the runner-up spot as Chen’s teammate, Chris Bushnell, won in a meet-record 53.27 seconds.
On his own, Licciardello gained fourth place in the 50 freestyle in 23.43 seconds, with Harrison German 11th (24.53) and Quinn Gruppe 12th in 25 seconds flat. Nate Durkin stepped up in the 500 freestyle, gaining fourth place in 5:55.23.
Tristan Miranda took fifth place in the 200 individual medley in 2:24.83, his quickest time of the winter by more than seven seconds. Harrison Meyers was 12th in the 200 freestyle in 2:08.35.
Ironically, B’ville was back at Nottingham a week later, this time for a head-to-head meet with the Syracuse City team, and again it proved successful, the Bees prevailing 99-77 to improve to 10-1 overall.
Hiltbrand roared to first place in the 50 freestyle in 22.42 seconds before winning the 100 breaststroke in 1:08.32. Ludden, in 1:55.53, edged Licciardello (1:56.08) in the 200 freestyle before Burns (2:19.91) and Harrison Meyers (2:24.45) went 1-2 in the 200 IM.
In the 100 butterfly, Miranda won in 56.22 seconds, with Burns (58.16) second. In the 200 freestyle relay, Schultz joined Hiltbrand, Licciardello and Miranda to go 1:51.98 while, in the 400 freestyle relay, Ludden, Schultz, Licciardello and Hiltbrand posted 3:33.14.
That concluded B’ville’s regular-season slate. Some would go to Nottingham for a “Last Chance” meet on Feb. 8, but otherwise the big work would go into preparing for the Feb. 14 Section III Class A championships.
