LIVERPOOL – Now the Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse boys swim teams are concentrating on their practices leading up to the Section III Class A championships that take place Feb. 15 at Nottingham.
To kick off the last week of the regular season, these two rivals met each other at Liverpool Tuesday night, where the Warriors pulled away to win 105-77 helped by having a far deeper roster on hand.
Yet it was the Northstars who pulled away in the first race, the 200-yard medley relay. Jacob Griffin, Caden Grifin, Joey Swenton and Anthony Gabrielli went one minute, 41.26 seconds, less than a second from the state qualifying standard of 1:40.67.
Then Jacob Griffin won two races of his own, going 22.44 seconds to edge Jack Cavallerano (22.58) in the 50 freestyle and, in the 100 backstroke, pulled away to take the top spot in 55.39 to the 1:01.49 from Liverpool’s James Hayden.
Joey Swenton also won two races for C-NS, holding off the Warriors’ Joe Lisi, 2:05.51 to 2:07.10, in a close 200 individual medley and, in the 100 breaststroke, going 1:05.09 to Lisi’s 1:07.07 as Donavan Medina (1:09.01) was third.
In a close diving competition, C-NS’s Nathan Oronski, with 224.05, beat out the 214.85 from Liverpool’s Colin Gridley and 211.25 from teammate Carter Canastra.
Cavallerano would prevail in the 100 butterfly, his 54.28 seconds just ahead of Caden Griffin’s 55.29 as Hayden (59.29) also broke the one-minute mark.
The Warriors went 1-2-3 in the 200 freestyle, Nate Alexander taking it in 1:55.78 as Ryan Vann (2:07.74) and John Morawski (2:11.98) followed.
Alexander also led a top-three sweep of the 500 freestyle, his 5:09.01 beating Vann’s 5:42.01 and Morawski’s 5:53.66 as Trevor Selig won the 100 freestyle in 51.32 second to Gabrielli’s 53.60, with Sean O’Neil third in 53.96.
Dominating the 200 freestyle relay, Cavallerano, Lisi, Selig and Alexander posted 1:33.53 to the Northstars’ 1:44.60, and in the 400 freestyle relay that same Warriors quartet won in 3:29.86 ahead of the 3:36.46 from Swenton, Gabrielli and the Griffins.
In Thursday’s regular-season finale, Liverpool dueled with unbeaten Jamesville-DeWitt/CBA while also taking on Auburn. The Warriors beat the Maroons 103-56, but lost 102-83 to the Red Rams.
A close diving competition had Gridley, with 275.50 points, beat out a strong J-D/CBA trio led by Cameron Corona, who got 257.95 points.
Cavallerano, in 54.43 seconds, beat out the Rams’ Lesha Kabunov (55.80) in the 100 butterfly after he was second (22.76) to Mark Bratslavsky (22.56) in the 50 freestyle, while Alexander earned first place in the 200 freestyle in 1:52.73 to go with a second (5:08.44) in the 500 freestyle.
Another close race, the 100 breaststroke, had Lisi’s 1:08.11 edge the 1:08.85 of Lucien Zens. Winning the 200 freestyle relay, Cavallerano, Selig, Lisi and Alexander posted 1:32.86, and they would later go 3:23.32 in the 400 freestyle relay, just behind J-D/CBA’s 3:22.62.
