West Genesee’s boys swim team would have a presence in four different events during last weekend’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships at Long Island’s Nassau County Aquatic Center.
Two of those Wildcats were in the diving event, where junior Justin Byrne entered as the 20th-ranked diver in the field and senior David Puma tried to improve from his 47th-place position.
Byrne would climb to 17th place in the opening round as Puma, with 177.90 points, finished 33rd. Then, in the semifinal round, Byrne remained in 17th and advanced to the finals.
Ulitmately, Byrne’s total of 411.65 points put him in 19th place, best among the seven Section III divers in the event. Bloomfield’s Alex Kenyon took the state championship with 515.45 points.
Turning to the race portions of the state meet, WG senior Ryan McMahon wanted to go under one minute in the 100-yard breaststroke, his best time so far this winter a 1:00.95.
And McMahon improved to 1:00.73 here to get to 32nd place as Baldwinsville’s Nick Schultz broke the sectional record with a time of 56.80 seconds to reach the finals as the second-fastest qualifier.
Moving to Saturday’s finals, McMahon set a new season mark with 1:00.65 and took 34th place overall. Schultz broke his day-old sectional record with 56.14 seconds, runner-up to the 55.03 from Dansville’s Aidan Kreiley.
As for junior Keegan Scharoun, he was trying to go quicker than 54.74 seconds in the 100-yard backstroke. While not quite doing so, Scharoun’s 54.83 seconds put him in 40th place, ahead of the 55.55 from the sectional champion, Liverpool’s Curtis Merrick.
McMahon and Scharoun got together with two other juniors, Alex Shuron and Chase Foresti, for the 200 medley relay, where WG’s time of 1:40.07 had put them in the state meet.
Getting under the 1:40 mark, the Wildcats posted 1:39.99 in qualifying and, in Saturday’s finals, fell off a bit to 1:40.27, but still finished 26th overall. Pittsford claimed the state championship with a time of 1:34.36.
Meanwhile, Westhill‘s Vincent Tarolli swam in both of the sprints, looking to improve upon times of 22.13 seconds in the 50 freestyle and 48.65 seconds in the 100 freestyle.
Tarolli went 22 seconds flat in qualifying in the 50 freestyle to advance to Saturday’s finals, where he went 22.39 seconds for 29th place. As for the 100 freestyle, Tarolli finished 39th in 49.06 seconds, unable to advance to the finals.
