Winning two races in a single meet in his strongest races was nothing new for Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA senior Chris Bushnell – but doing so in the exact same times was unique and special.
That was part of the reason Bushnell was named the Swimmer of the Meet in Thursday’s Section III Class A championships at Nottingham High School, while Fayetteville-Manlius, led by senior Tanner Eisenhut, rose all the way to second place in the team standings.
Bushnell swam the 100-yard butterfly in 52.81 seconds, just holding off Watertown’s Nate Carlos (53.08 seconds) for that top spot. Then, in the 100 backstroke, Bushnell set a new program record…in 52.81 seconds, nearly two seconds clear of Liverpool’s Griffin Merkling (54.59 seconds) to win again.
In the 200 medley relay, Bushnell, paired with Conlan Rourke, Nathan Chen and Liam Kaplan, went 1:40.06 to finish third and beat the state qualifying standard of 1:40.67.
Even with these efforts, J-D/CBA was sixth in the sectional team standings, while F-M, with 317 points, beat everyone except Liverpool, who repeated as champions with 342 points.
Twice, the Hornets prevailed, starting with Eisenhut going to the 200 individual medley and, in 1:57.15, improve on his previous best 2:05.30 by more than eight seconds to beat Watertown’s Nate Carlos (1:59.08) and advance to the March 1-2 state championships on Long Island.
Yet that was expected – unlike the 200 freestyle relay, where F-M, in the far outside lane, had Eisenhut, Nate Montgomery, Nico Foster and Lucas Wieres go 1:31.15 to edge Liverpool (1:31.18) by three-hundredths of a second. J-D/CBA finished seventh in 1:38.55.
Eisenhut returned in the 100 breaststroke and earned another state meet berth by finishing second in 59.83 seconds, more than four seconds quicker than his previous 1:03.89 this winter, with Baldwinsvlle’s Nick Schultz prevailing in 58.22 seconds and Chen finishing fifth in 1:03.12.
To close the meet, Eisenhut paired with Montgomery, Wieres and Quinn Smith to go 3:26.31 and finish third in the 400 freestyle relay. Montgomery also finished fourth in the 50 freestyle in a season-best 22.52 seconds and was fifth in the 100 freestyle in 50.42 seconds.
Back on Feb. 9, in the sectional diving competition, J-D/CBA’s Lucas Dekaney continued his season-long domination, winning with 486.00 points over West Genesee’s Justin Byrne (409.25) and David Puma (405.45). F-M’s Connor Gleasman was fifth with 329.25 points.
The Hornets’ Tristan Wellner got fifth place in the 100 butterfly in 54.85 seconds, less than a second from the state qualifying standard (53.95) as Wieres was eighth in 57.87 seconds. Wieres finished ninth in the 200 freestyle in 1:58.19, with Miguel Aldana (2:00.79) in 12th place.
F-M’s Jordan Krouse was sixth in the 500 freestyle in 5:19.28, with J-D-CBA’s Nate Wales seventh in 5:22.06 and Aldana eighth in 5:23.99.
Quinn Smith gave the Hornets a sixth-place time of 59.57 seconds in the 100 backstroke behind Bushnell as Krouse was seventh in 1:00.91. Richard Wan was eighth in the 100 breaststroke in 1:06.41.
For J-D/CBA, Rourke was seventh in the 50 freestyle in 23.33 seconds and improved his 100 freestyle team by nearly a full second, to 50.23, and made his way to fourth place.
