Swimming Places Third In C&I Relay Carnival

The boys and girls swim teams had an opportunity to compete in the Cape & Islands Relay Carnival on Saturday, placing third out of seven teams with 77 points. Nauset (120 points) and Sandwich (111 points) finished first and second respectively. Head coach Sophie Davies said she was happy with how her team performed.

“I am really proud of my team. We got some really good baseline times out of them,” she said. “The relay carnival is definitely meant more as a good start to the season. There are a lot of events you wouldn’t normally see in any other meets. There are a lot of mixed events so there are a lot of opportunities to get swimmers who wouldn’t normally swim together to work together and have a good time.”

Junior Hannah Harrington, sophomore Martina Savova, freshman Myah Johnson, and freshman Sara Dussault placed first in the 200-yard freestyle relay with a time of 1:53.31, narrowly beating out Nauset’s top team who finished with a time of 1:55.39. Johnson led the group with a time of 23.63 in her portion of the relay.

In the mixed 500-yard freestyle relay, junior Lauren Cutone, freshman Emery Bouchard, eighth grader Eli MacIver, and sophomore Jake Johnson placed first with a time of 5:17.12, which was ten seconds faster than Martha’s Vineyard’s second place finish.

The boys 200-yard freestyle relay team was disqualified, but Jake Johnson had a personal best in his 50 free of 22.24.

Davies said Jake Johnson in particular stood out. As a whole, she said while there weren’t many personal bests at this meet, there were still plenty of strong swims that can be built upon moving forward.

“(Senior captain) Justin Roethke swam great. He was very consistent throughout the whole meet and has just been a great captain for our team early on here helping some of our less experienced swimmers,” Davies said. “He has been doing a great job of being a teammate and leader. Archie Ferguson had a great day, and he is an example of someone who may not always be one of our top swimmers, but he swam some of his breaststroke times he has ever swam and was consistent.”

On the girl’s side, Davies said Harrington had a good day and she figures Harrington will be one of the team’s top female swimmers.
“I thought Hannah had an excellent day,” Davies said. “She was keeping up with a lot of her times from last year.”

Between the December Delight fundraising event and the tragic motorcycle accident last week that led to the death of an NHS student, about half the team did not participate in the carnival. Davies said not having half the team can be difficult to overcome at a relay carnival where you need four swimmers to make up a team in each race.

“We were trying to make sure we had at least one team in each race,” Davies said. “That was sort of my main goal when I put together this lineup. I wanted to make sure I got swimmers in an even number of races. Since we were just getting baseline times, we weren’t necessarily going into this to win it like we will be the rest of the season.”

The final standings were as followed:

1) Nauset – 120 points

2) Sandwich – 111

3) Nantucket – 77

4) Martha’s Vineyard – 61

5) St. John Paul II – 38

6) Barnstable – 34

7) Bishop Connolly – 13

The Whalers will begin their regular season on Saturday, December 17 when they travel to Martha’s Vineyard for a 12 p.m. meet.