SYRACUSE – Once more, Cazenovia High School students have contributed to the swimming success of the Fayetteville-Manlius program that uses Cazenovia College’s pool as a home venue.
And in this case, no one in Wednesday’s Section III Class A championships proved better than Cazenovia senior Quinn Smith, who was named the meet’s outstanding swimmer and was joined by junior Max Vidakovic and senior Cooper Hughes.
All of them helped F-M take second place in the sectional team standings with 349.5 points, trailing only the 388 put up by Jamesville-DeWitt/Christian Brothers Academy.
Smith entered the sectional meet top-ranked in the 200-yard individual medley, but would improve upon his previous-best time of this winter by more than two seconds.
Also, by going one minute, 57.53 seconds, Smith easily surpassed the 2:00.63 he needed to qualify for the March 4-5 New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships at Ithaca College.
Moving to the 100 backstroke, Smith had gone 55.10 seconds this season and was seeded second behind J-D/CBA’s Nathaniel Wales, who best time this winter was 54.94.
Each of them would better those times in the sectional final – but it was Smith inching his way in front over the final 50 yards and, in 53.04 seconds, setting a new school record and earning a second state meet berth, with Wales second in 53.64 and also qualifying for the state meet.
These performance helped Smith to the outstanding swimmer honors, beating out two other double winners at the Class A meet, Cicero-North Syracuse’s Jacob Griffin (50 and 100 freestyle) and J-D/CBA’s Misha Kabunov (200 and 500 freestyle).
When the sectional state qualifier was held two nights later, Smith broke his own 100 backstroke mark, tearing to a time of 52.69 seconds as Wales (54.94) and the field was more than two seconds behind.
And though not as quick as he was in the Class A meet, Smith again prevailed in the 200 IM, his 1:58.59 the only time under two minutes as Mexico’s Tyler Warner (2:02.10) was second.
Earlier, Smith and Hughes both took part in the Class A 200 medley relay with Carter Page and Jason Porter, helping F-M post a time of 1:44.43, a close second to J-D/CBA’s 1:43.26. And in the 400 freestyle relay, Smith, Porter, Eli Kligerman and Eddie Elliott made it to third place in 3:24.98.
In the 200 medley relay during the state qualifier, F-M would finish third in 1:42.65 and beat J-D/CBA’s 1:42.74, with the Hornets sixth in the 400 freestyle relay in 3:25.81.
As for Vidakovic, he was the seventh seed in the Class A 100 butterfly, having gone no faster than 1:00.22 this season,
But Vidakovic rose to third place in this race in a season-best 57.94 seconds, trailing only the 55.61 from Liverpool’s Jack Cavallerano and the 57.11 from Cicero-North Syracuse’s Caden Griffin. He then swam 57.84 in the state qualifier to take seventh place.
In the Class A 200 IM, Vidakovic finished seventh in a season-beset 2:13.95 behind Smith, while Hughes took ninth in the Class A 100 freestyle in 53.52 seconds and was 12th in the 50 freestyle in 24.25 seconds.
