SYRACUSE – Two Baldwinsville girls swimmers – one quite familiar, the other more of a surprise – produced victories during Wednesday’s Section III Class A championships at Nottingham High School.
Eva Smith continued her dominant ways, tuning up for the Nov. 17-18 state championships at Webster with top times in two events and nearly helping two other relays prevail, too.
But it was Olivia McManus giving the Bees an extra jolt in the 100-yard butterfly final. With her time of one minute, 1.47 seconds, McManus was half a second ahead of the runner-up, Oswego/Mexico’s Joscelyn Coniski, who posted 1:01.98.
This followed a 200 individual medley where McManus posted 2:22.26 and was less than half a second from victory, Cicero-North Syracuse’s Leah Benedict taking it in 2:21.77.
Smith put up a time of 24.83 seconds in the 50 freestyle, well clear of the 25.21 from Fayetteville-Manlius’ Georgia Langan. Later, in her specialty, the 100 backstroke, Smith won in 58.28, nearly four seconds ahead of the Oswego/Mexico’s Evie Fontana in 1:02.70.
In the team Class A sectional standings, B’ville finished sixth with 247 points. F-M won for the eighth year in a row, gaining 405 points to hold off Liverpool’s second-place 369.
Contending in the 200 medley relay, Smith and McManus, paired with Mia Rinko and Eliza Gramiak, finished in 2:00.58, less than a second behind F-M’s winning 1:59.81. And in the closing 400 freestyle relay, Smith, Rinko, McManus and Erin Gruppe got to third place in 3:52.19, not far from Liverpool’s winning 3:49.50.
During Friday’s sectional state qualifying meet at Nottingham, Smith would again stand out as she and New Hartford’s Katie Lester (who took the 200 freestyle and 100 butterfly) were the only double event winners.
In the 50 freestyle, Smith’s time of 24.71 seconds improved on the sectional meet and beat Langan’s 25.17. Then Smith exactly matched her 58.28 from earlier in the week in the 100 backstroke to beat CBA’s Anna Fuller (1:02.74) by more than four seconds.
McManus, in the 100 butterfly, reached the podium by taking third place in 1:02.21 and was seventh in the 200 individual medley in 2:25.03, having helped Smith, Gramiak and Rinko get fifth in the 200 medley relay in a season-best 1:58.94 before Gruppe helped Rinko, Smith and McManus finish seventh in the 400 freestyle relay in 3:57.90.
