With just three seniors on its roster, and most of its top performers from recent years graduated, this was the season that someone was going to upend the Liverpool boys swim team.
Except that nobody did.
From a 12-0 sweep through the regular season that produced another Salt City Athletic Conference crown, the Warriors went on to repeat as Section III Class A champions on Thursday at Nottingham High School.
Even though it didn’t win any race, Liverpool still accumulated 342 points, enough to fend off a strong challenge from Fayetteville-Manlius (317 points) for the top spot as Watertown finished third with 294 points.
In the process, the Warriors had junior Curtis Merrick and sophomore Griffin Merkling qualify for the March 1-2 state championships on Long Island in their best races.
Merrick went 53.95 seconds in the 100 butterfly to meet the exact time standard needed for the state meet in that race, finishing fourth overall. Then, in the 100 backstroke, Merkling improved to 54.59 seconds to move under the 54.82 he needed in that race and gain second place.
Both events were won by Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA’s Chris Bushnell in the exact same time of 52.81 seconds as he was named the Swimmer of the Meet, but Liverpool’s depth would again lead them to the team title.
Merkling and Merrick, joined by Brandon Nguyen and Julien Brownlow, finished fourth in the 200 medley relay in 1:40.44 to get into the state meet, since 1:40.67 was needed. Jack Andrejko, Ryan Wilhelm, Kyle Richardson and Jack Hyde led another Liverpool foursome that got ninth place in 1:48.16.
More points came from the 100 backstroke, where, behind Merkling, A.J. Wagner rose up to take fourth place in 59.06 seconds and Andrejko finished fifth in 59.41 seconds, with Hyde eighth in 1:01.94.
Liverpool nearly won the 200 freestyle relay, having Brownlow, Nguyen, Merrick and Evan Kline go 1:31.18, only to get beat on an outside lane by F-M’s 1:31.15.
In the 100 freestyle, Brownlow was second in 49.09 seconds to Watertown’s Simon Stratton (48.07), just below the state qualifying standard of 48.76. Brownlow went 22.47 seconds to get third place in the 50 freestyle, with Merrick fifth in 22.71 seconds and Michael Piraino 12th in 24.21 seconds.
Uriy Grabovyy earned 331.10 points to get fourth place in diving as Kyle Counterman (259.20 points) got 13th plac Merkling was fourth in the 200 individual medley in 2:02.82, with Nguyen fifth in 2:07.01 as Andrejko got 10th place in 2:17.96 and Wilhelm was 14th. Nguyen finished seventh in the 100 freestyle in 50.89 seconds, with Kline 13th.
Richardson got fifth place in the 200 freestyle in 1:53.37, with Brodie Powers (1:58.53) beating out Will Allen (1:58.80) for 10th place as Richardson was ninth in the 100 butterfly in 57.98 seconds and Jack Hyde was 13th. Wilhelm was 10th in the 100 breaststroke in 1:08.22 as Allen got 12th place in the 500 freestyle in 5:33.23.
Cicero-North Syracuse finished ninth with 128 points, having its best finish in the 200 freestyle relay, where Logan Petralia, Dom Bagozzi, Seaver Schultz and Bruce Hepel finished fourth in 1:35.63, improving upon its previous-best time of 1:39.04 by more than three seconds.
Hepel and Bagozzi joined Dillon Johnson and Tanner Dwyer to go 3:39.34 in the 400 freestyle relay, improving in that event by more than 10 seconds and not far behind Liverpool’s seventh-place 3:38.46 done by Richardson, Andrejko, Wilhelm and Kline.
Logan Petralia, John Harbaugh, Seaver Schultz and Adam Rein were eighth in the 200 medley relay in 1:47.02. Petralia got eighth place in the 50 freestyle in 23.39 seconds, with Schultz 10th in 23.71 seconds as Rein was 12th in the 100 breaststroke in 1:09.68.
Dillon Johnson was ninth in the 100 backstroke in 1:03.46. Petralia went 52.19 seconds in the 100 freestyle to finish 10th as Schultz was 11th in 52.71 seconds. Harbaugh was 11th in the 100 butterfly in 1:00.24 and 17th in the 500 freestyle, two spots behind Dom Bagozzi (5:44.88) in 15th place.
