CENTRAL NEW YORK – Never before had second and third-place finishes in a race meant so much.
The Liverpool girls swim team did not win the final event of Friday’s meet against Fayetteville-Manlius at Cazenovia College, but it did not have to.
By claiming the second and third-place points, the Warriors prevailed 96-90 and, by doing so, ended the Hornets’ seven-year, 64-meet win streak and climbed to the top of the Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division standings.
When the 400-yard freestyle relay got underway, Liverpool and F-M were tied 86-86, and it was the Hornets who had the top time of three minutes, 53.97 seconds.
But then the Warriors’ quartet of Kaitlyn Thompson, Emerson Gellert, Sarah Colwell and Arianna Kuznia finished second in 3:57.82, and when Chloe Brown, Isabelle Akley, Julia King and Sydney Hayes got second in 4:14.62, Liverpool had the points it needed to finish on top.
Before all this, the main method the Warriors used to build up points involved a lot of second and third-place efforts to counteract F-M’s individual wins, along with two relay victories.
Kerry Hunter, Hayden, Elizabeth Manley and Jessie went 2:10.87 in the 200 medley relay, edging the Hornets’ 2:11.14 when its other quartet was disqualified. Then, in the 200 freestyle relay, Gellert, Thompson, Kuznia and Colwell went 1:46.73 to hold off F-M’s 1:47.30.
King went 1:19.32 to win a tight 100 breaststroke over F-M’s Lily Fowler (1:19.50) as Hunter finished third. Thompson won the 50 freestyle in 25.83 seconds to Cecliia Cao’s 25.99 as she also finished second in the 100 backstroke.
Sofia Valente, June Piorkoeski and Brianna Patton got the second through fourth spots in diving as Colwell took second in the 200 (2:07.28) and 500 (5:44.30) freestyle races.
Kuznia was second in the 200 individual medley in 2:29 flat and second (58.80) in the 100 freestyle, where Hunter was third. Gellert made it to second in the 100 butterfly in 1:07.51, inches behind the 1:07.49 from Cao.
Prior to this, Liverpool defeated Baldwinsville 58-35 last Tuesday at Baker High School, getting two wins from Colwell as she swam the 200 freestyle in 2:09.59 and the 500 freestyle in 5:51.11.
Thompson went 26.36 seconds in the 50 freestyle, with Kuznia taking the 100 freestyle in 59.36 as Kerry Hunter swam the 100 breaststroke in 1:21.08 and Gellert went 1:09.46 in the 100 butterfly.
In relays, Kuznia, Thompson, Brown and Akley went 1:52.45 to take the 200 freestyle. Later, in the 400 freestyle relay, Hunter, Brown, Colwell and Gellert won in 4:06.77.
