What must scare anyone trying to face the Liverpool boys swim team in 2019-20 is the fact that it will return nearly all of its top performers from this winter, when it merely won everything it could claim.
There was a 12-0 regular season, an SCAC Metro division title, the Section III Class A championship and, last of all, the George Falwell Cup, which again went to the Warriors following Saturday’s sectional state qualifying meet at Nottingham High School.
This one was a bit closer than the sectional Class A meet two days earlier, Liverpool needing 259 points to hold off fast-improving Fayetteville-Manlius, who was second with 240 points. Watertown took third place with 210 points.
Just as in the sectional meet, Liverpool did not finish first in any event, but was runner-up four times and earned points in almost every race on the card.
To begin with, Liverpool’s 200-yard medley relay quartet of Griffin Merkling, Curtis Merrick, Brandon Nguyen and Juilen Brownlow went one minute, 40.20 seconds, improving on its 1:40.44 from the sectional meet and less than a second behind Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA (1:39.72) and Baldwinsville (1:39.92).
Merkling would finish second twice by himself. In the 200 individual medley, he qualified for the state meet by going 1:59.41, an improvement of more than three seconds from his 2:02.82 in the sectional meet. Only F-M’s Tanner Eisenhut, who won in 1:57.15, topped him as Nguyen finished sixth in a season-best 2:06.60.
Moving to the 100 backstroke, Merkling, already in the state meet with 54.59 seconds, could only get 55.42 here, trailing J-D/CBA’s Chris Bushnell, who won in 52.50 seconds. Gaining more valuable points, Jack Andrejko was seventh in 59.76 seconds, with A.J. Wagner eighth in 1:00.72.
Brownlow’s big individual moment came in the 100 freestyle. Needing 48.76 seconds to reach the state meet, Brownlow, who had gone 49.09 seconds in the sectional meet, got there – by one-hundredth of a second, his 48.75 second to Watertown’s Simon Stratton (48.07).
Also, Brownlow improved to 22.38 seconds in the 50 freestyle, just missing the state qualifying standard of 22.19 but taking third place behind B’ville’s Alex Hiltbrand, who edged Stratton, 21.71 to 21.72.
Having already qualified for the state meet in the 200 freestyle relay with 1:29.42 earlier this season, Liverpool’s 200 freestyle relay team of Brownlow, Nguyen, Merrick and Evan Kline went 1:30.64, again second to F-M, who won with 1:30.23.
And it was there that Cicero-North Syracuse had its best finish of the state qualifier, with Logan Petralia, Bruce Hepel, Dom Baogzzi and Seaver Schultz going 1:33.83 to finish fifth, improving on its previous 1:35.63 from the sectional meet.
Merrick was sixth in the 50 freestyle, improving his time to 22.62 seconds, but did better in the 100 butterfly, rising to fifth place in 54.77 seconds as Bushnell won in 52.81 seconds on his way to Outstanding Swimmer of the Meet honors.
