SYRACUSE – At least for now, the Fayetteville-Manlius and Cicero-North Syracuse boys swim programs share the fact that they have home meets far from their actual school campuses.
And the two sides met head-to-head last Tuesday night at Nottingham High School, where the Hornets won only five of the 12 races, but had nine runner-up finishes to make up for it and defeated the Northstars 99-85.
Eli Kligerman and Ben Mathews went 1-2 in the 200 freestyle, with Kligerman prevailing in 1:57.31 to edge out the 1:57.77 from Matthews as Anthony Bottar finished fourth. They also helped the Hornets get first in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:35.93.
Another F-M sweep happened in the 100 butterfly thanks to Max Vidakovic going 57.76 seconds and Ben Prendergast, in 1:00.68, beating out the 1:01.24 from C-NS’s Brandon Kell.
A top-four sweep in the 500 freestyle was led by Mathews, whose 5:49.81 was just enough to hold off Silas Kligerman (5:53.29) and Zach Winans (5:54.07) as Conor Kelly (5:58.03) also broke the six-minute mark.
To clinch the team victory, in the 100 breaststroke Bottar beat the field in 1:09.86, with Nolan Campagna finishing second in 1:14.11 edging Vlad Roman (1:14.67) in third place.
Elsewhere, Prendergast got second (2:19.41) to C-NS’s Jake Griffin (2:13.04) in the 200 individual medley. Derick Wang went 23.30 seconds in the 50 freestyle, second behind Caden Griffin (23.07) as Michael Wilson was third and Steve Wratney fourth.
The 100 freestyle also had a win from Caden Griffin in 50.87, but James Cao (52.66) was second, Wang took third (53.39) and Kligerman was fourth in 54.23. Cao went on to get second (1:01.38) to Jake Griffin (56.38) in the 100 backstroke as Vidakovic finished fourth in 1:05.51.
In the closing 400 freestyle relay, the Hornets’ time of 3:36.26 turned back C-NS (3:37.38) in second place. F-M also swam the 200 medley relay in 1:59.94, second to C-NS’s 1:50.02.
Jamesville-DeWitt/Christian Brothers Academy had two solid finishes during the Salt City Dive Invitational, where Cameron Corona finished fourth with 432.05 points and Garrett Fuller (335.25) was eighth. F-M’s Connor Gleasman finished 11th.
