SYRACUSE – In recent years, Cazenovia High School has provided a reliable pipeline to the Fayetteville-Manlius girls swim team that has home meets right down the road at Cazenovia College.
Even after Morgan Kingsley’s graduation, the flow of talent continued to make an impact as Kate Millson led a quartet that contributed to yet another Hornets run to the Section III Class A championship.
F-M had seen its 64-meet win streak ended by Liverpool in September, but swept the rest of its regular-season slate and, in the sectional meet Wednesday at Nottingham High School, got payback, scoring 379 points to beat out the Warriors (330) and Cicero-North Syracuse (324) for the top spot.
Millson, a junior, would help F-M win the opening 200-yard medley relay, pairing with Cecilia Cao, Elise Wratney and Georgia Langan to prevail in one minutes, 52.73 seconds to top C-NS’s 1:55.40 and prevail.
On her own, Millson contended in the 200-yard individual medley, her time of 2:24.49 setting a season mark by more than four seconds as she took third behind Oswego-Mexico star Alexa von Holtz (2:07.71) and was just behind C-NS’s Leah Benedict (2:23.58).
Also, Millson got to the finals of the 500 freestyle, where her 5:47.26 could not quite match her season-best 5:46.02 but still put her in seventh place overall.
Another Cazenovia student, sophomore Eliza Smith, earned ninth place in the Class A 100 butterlfy in a season-best 1:10.22 while improving her 500 freestyle time nearly 14 seconds to 6:07.50 for 12th place.
Maeve Kelly, also a sophomore, swam and dove for the Hornets, finishing 15th in the 200 IM in 2:41.53 after the Oct. 29 diving competitoin where she was 17th overall. Freshman Izzy Comeau was 19th in the 100 breaststroke in 1:22.69.
During Friday’s sectional state qualifier, Millson again was in the 200 medley relay, where in a time of 1:52.51 F-M just missed out on advancing to the state meet, inches behind New Hartford’s winning 1:52.26.
In the 200 IM, Millson claimed eighth place in 2:27.96 before she finished ninth in the 500 freestyle in a season-best 5:41.88. And in the 400 freestyle relay, Millson joined Grace Reyna, Samantha Roddy and Kelly Liu to take sixth place in 3:58.61.
All of this helped F-M earn 268.5 points in the team standings, beating everyone except New Hartford, whose 277 points helped it earn the George Falwell Cup for the first time since 2005.
