BATH — The Cony High School girls swim team perfectly bookended its day in the pool at the Bath YMCA by winning the opening and closing relay events, but it was hard for the Rams not to walk away from the meet with at least a slight taste of disappointment.
Cony swimmers won seven different events on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to overcome perennial power Brunswick, which claimed the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class A championship on Saturday. The Dragons made it a clean sweep of the day, with the Brunswick boys also winning the KVAC title in a runaway over an impressive Waterville/Winslow squad.
On the girls side, the Dragons held off Cony by just a 10-point margin — after scoring 29 points in the diving event. Brunswick was the only girls team to field divers at the meet.
“Diving won’t have as much of an impact on us (at the state meet),” said Cony coach Jon Millett, who was named the KVAC girls coach of the year. “Our kids are geared to win a state championship if we show up and swim like we’re capable of. We’re not peaked yet; we’re going to peak two weeks from now.”
Cony’s Anne Guadalupi and Gabby Low each won two individual events and were both part of two winning relay teams.
“It is a little disppointing,” Low said of finishing second in the team competition. “But I think when we come around to states (in two weeks), we’ll definitely show what we’ve got.”
Brunswick’s point total was 297 to Cony’s 287. Messalonskee finished third (127).
The Eagles also finished third in the final boys standings.
A senior, Guadalupi turned in an outstanding day, winning the 200-yard freestyle in 1:58.98, nearly nine seconds ahead of her closest competition. She also won the 500 freestyle and swam the opening leg on Cony’s victorious 200 medley relay team and the anchor leg on the winning 400 freestyle relay.
The Rams clocked in at 1:52.81 in the 200 medley, breaking the KVAC record set four years ago.
“This is the stepping stone to the state meet,” Guadalupi said. “We’re takng it one event at a time, and we’ll see what happens at the end. We’re really happy about breaking the KVAC record. All of us were prepared for this meet, all of us were swimming well this week, so going into it I think we knew that we were going to do well.”
Low, a sophomore, won both the 100 butterfly (59.08) and the 100 backstroke (59.89). She was the only swimmer to break the one-minute mark in either event.
“It was a big surprise to me,” said Low, who, like Guadalupi, swam on the two winning Cony relay teams. “It was a lot of hard work. I’ve been training a lot harder this year, and my teammates have really pushed me and helped me.”
While Low might have surprised herself, her coach wasn’t surprised in the least.
“She was a big surpise last year, but now it’s an expectation,” Millett said of Low. “Maybe to some degree, I take her and Anne and Talia (Jorgenson) for granted. There’s not a team in the state that wouldn’t like to have those three.”
Jorgenson, a sophomore, won the 50 free and swam the opening leg on the 400 free relay.
In the boys competition, one of the day’s most outstanding individual performances belonged to Waterville’s John Reisert. The junior blew away the field in the 500 freestyle, pulling away to a nearly pool-length advantage to beat Mt. Ararat’s Devin Hoskins, who swam stroke for stroke with Reisert during the first half of the endurance event.
“I was not expecting to go that time. I’ve been training a long time in that event, so it’s nice to see the reward,” Reisert said of his 5:16.13 winning time. “When you see that guy right next to you, there’s something that just pushes you. ‘I don’t know who he his, I don’t know what he’s up to, but I’ve got to beat him.'”
Reisert was also part of the Waterville/Winslow 400 free relay team that finished second, lifting the team into second place overall in the boys competition in its first foray into a Class A meet. The two schools merged this season after competing separately in Class B in previous years.
“It was a great day for us,” Waterville/Winslow boys coach Justin Giroux said.
Cony’s Nathaniel Berry won the 50 free (22.31) and finished second in the 100 backstroke.
Brunswick’s Matt Yost and Brian Hess each won a pair of events.
Travis Barrett — 621-5621
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @TBarrettGWC
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