By Dean Geddes
I&M Staff Writer
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Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger
Nantucket’s Kelley Martin, right, dives off the blocks at the start of the 50-yard freestyle Saturday against North Attleboro. Also pictured is Whaler Haley Cabre, far left, and North Attleboro’s Aimee MacDonald. The Nantucket girls lost the meet 94-74. |
The boys swim team continued its hot streak over the weekend, notching a pair of victories over North Attleboro and Holliston. The girls team split its meets, winning on Sunday at Holliston, and losing at home to North Attleboro on Saturday.
The girls have faced stiffer competition this season as the growing trend in swimming around eastern Massachusetts is a decline in depth on the boys teams, Nantucket head coach Jim Pignato said.
When North Attleboro came to Nantucket on Saturday, it brought a team of 30 girls and only five boys, and on Sunday, Holliston fielded a team with only eight male swimmers.
Nantucket, by comparison, has 19 swimmers on the boys’ side.
The boys are now 4-1 on the season, while the girls are 2-3. The teams have another set of back-to-back meets this week, as they are scheduled to travel to Sharon High School on Saturday and then to Coyle Cassidy on Sunday.
Both teams are Bay Colony Conference rivals.
“This weekend is different because both of these meets really count. We need to bounce back on Saturday and swim our A game,” Pignato said.
The girls meet against Holliston was extremely close, with the Whalers trailing 84-82 going into the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay. The girls would need at least a first- and a third-place finish in the event to pull out a win.
The team of Rachel Schneider, Ashley Martin, Briana Vittorini and Ainsley Ellis took first place in 4:12.14.
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Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger
Whaler Harrison O’Rourke won the 200-yard freestyle Saturday against North Attleboro. The Nantucket boys team went on to win 69-62 against a school that only brought five boys to the meet. The girls had a tougher time with North Attleboro, losing 94-74. Both teams have back-to-back meets scheduled again this week. |
The meet was now in the hands of Janeen Manghis, Meaghan Lynch, Claire Jensen, and Haley Cabre. After Manghis, Lynch, and Jensen finished their legs of the relay, the girls were in a dead heat with the competing Holliston team, and it would come down to the final swimmer for each team.
Jensen “blew the doors off” her competitors in the final leg of the relay, Pignato said. She finished far ahead of her Holliston counterpart to secure Nantucket third in the relay and a 92-88 win.
Other highlights from the meet included Ashley Martin’s second-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle in 2:19.74.
Kaitlyn Ellis finished first in the 500-yard freestyle in 5:49.28, and won the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:19.56.
Easy victory
The boys had a much easier time in their meet against Holliston, using their depth to accumulate points with uncontested third- and fourth-place finishes en route to the 97-61 win.
Highlights for the boys included Beau Garufi’s second-place finish in the 500-yard freestyle in 5:58.05, and Will Martin’s win in the 200-yard freestyle in 2:21.20.
Still, Pignato wasn’t satisfied. “We swam off our marks,” he said. “Having back-to-back meets and the hour and a half bus ride took its toll. Thankfully we were able to win despite not swimming our best.”
Not enough
The girls lost 94-74 on Saturday to North Attleboro at the Nantucket Community Pool despite having six first-place finishes in the 11-event meet.
“Our A swimmers were getting first places, but our B and C swimmers struggled,” Pignato said.
This time it was the Nantucket girls who suffered from a lack of depth as the Whalers had only 13 swimmers on their team to North Attleboro’s 30.
Despite the loss, four Nantucket swimmers finished the meet with season-best times. Jensen finished first in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:22.04, and Ashley Martin’s 500-yard freestyle time of 6:16.90 was good enough to earn her entry in to the sectional qualifiers held Feb. 19 at Northeastern University in Boston.
Kelley Martin’s 100-yard freestyle time of 1:00.08 earned her first place in the event. And Vittorini finished first in the 100-yard butterfly in 1:11.61.
Not so close
Although the 69-62 score would seem to indicate otherwise, the boys scored an easy victory against North Attleboro. Because the team brought only five swimmers to Nantucket, it was unable to field competitors in the final three events, so in a show of sportsmanship Pignato “exhibitioned,” or didn’t count the points, in two of the final three events.
“They only had five swimmers, but they were extremely fast. We knew beforehand that with the number of boys we had, we would win the meet,” Pignato said.
Highlights of the meet included Harrison O’Rourke’s win in the 200-yard freestyle; Sam Toole’s second-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle; and O’Rourke’s second-place finish in the 100-yard freestyle in 54.7 seconds, just one-tenth of a second behind North Attleboro’s Nathan Reddy.
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