SYRACUSE – If ever a single event demonstrated the importance of depth on a roster and contributions from many different athletes, the Fayetteville-Manlius boys swim team’s 95-89 win over West Genesee last Saturday at Le Moyne College was it.
Of the 12 races on the card, the Wildcats won nine of them, many of the close variety. But the Hornets made up for it with a couple of timely sweeps and especially with 10 different third-place finishes to WG’s two.
All of this came on a day where Jamesville-DeWitt/Christian Brothers Academy diver Cameron Corona earned a spot in the March 1 state championship meet at Ithaca College through his efforts at the Burgos Dive Invitational at Nottingham.
Earning a total of 467.00 points, Corona comfortably exceeded the 450-point standard the New York State Public High School Athletic Association requires to get into the championship meet.
Overall. Corona finished fourth as two others, Baldwinsville’s Nick Pompo (471.25) and Cicero-North Syracuse’s Nate Ornoski (468.10) also qualified for the state meet to join Central Square’s Truman Remnicky, who won with 490.05. J-D/CBA’s Garrett Fuller finished sixth with 381.25 points.
Not far away, at Le Moyne, F-M was finding itself on the wrong end of several tight races against West Genesee, starting with a 200-yard medley relay where James Cao, Anthony Bottar, Max Vidakovic and Derick Wang went one minute, 47.67 seconds, but was edged by WG’s 1:46.22.
The 200 freestyle had close to the exact same outcome, with Jack Prendergast, in 1:55.46, just behind Gavin Flanagan’s 1:55.15, while in the 50 freestyle Ben Mathews went 23.68 seconds and Wang 23.87 behind Ryan Goshow’s 23.59 for the Wildcats.
And it continued in the 100 freestyle, with Prendergast finishing in 52.78 seconds and Mathews in 52.81. Again, though, Goshow prevailed, going 52.44.
To make up for all this, F-M did take first place in diving thanks to Oliver Gleasman’s 211.55 points before Vidakovic, in the 100 butterfly tore to first place in 59.36 seconds, with Ben Prendergast second in 1:02.97.
Cao would get a close win of his own when, in the 100 backstroke, he posted 59.74 seconds to hold off the 1:00.06 from WG’s Sean Putman, while in the 200 freestyle relay Mathews, Wang, Jack Prendergast and Eli Kilgerman won it in 1:37.71, with a second F-M side posting 1:42.69 to top the Wildcats’ 1:42.87 and gain more valuable points.
Silas Kligerman added a second-place finish in the 500 freestyle in 5:46.87, with Zach Winas third and Conor Kelly fourth. Anthony Bottar took second (1:12.15) and Vlad Roman third (1:13.99) in the 100 breaststroke.
And to close out the meet, the Hornets’ quartet of Cao, Wang, Mathews and Eli Kligerman would go 3:35.95 in the 400 freestyle relay, just beating out WG’s 3:37.91.
