Seahawks add Raven feathers to their season bounty

A 129-39 victory over Sussex Tech Jan. 12 kept the Sussex Academy girls’ swim team undefeated while the boys’ 110-43 win bumped their win streak up to four.

“This meet's always a fun one; I love swimming against Tech,” said senior Victoria Evans. “Once you go five years swimming against the same team, it's fun to see the same people again. All of them are so nice, and I think our team did pretty darn well. We got top three for girls in a lot of events.”

“Nostalgic in a way, it brought flashbacks back from my eighth-grade year,” senior Christian Wright said. “Going back and realizing how much we've grown as a team and how much I've grown, especially from these last couple of years; I'm just soaking it all in now.”

With the exception of the breaststroke, won by Sussex Tech’s Meile Garrett, the Seahawks girls touched first in every event. Junior Anna Mumford won the 200 and 100 freestyle contests. Sam Petty took the 50 freestyle, Kendall Rhodes dominated the 500 freestyle and Gretchen Maughan captured the butterfly.

Maughan, Evans and Petty linked up with Camila Figueroa to win the medley relay. Petty and Maughan won the 200 freestyle relay with senior Emily Obertubbesing and junior Claudia Warren. Figueroa and Warren wrapped up the meet by winning the 400 freestyle relay with freshman Ava Allfather and eighth-grader Madeline Perchiniak.

Evans won the individual medley and the backstroke, finishing ahead of her eighth-grade sister Eliza, who took second place in the latter.

“She's basically a younger version of me, so we're always going together now; they call us the Evans duo,” Victoria said. “We're always swimming backstroke; everybody talks about it, which is funny. But I love swimming with her. It's a little bittersweet because it's my last year, but it's cool that I get to be with her.”

Sussex Tech freshman Ethan Schirmer bested the opponents in the boys’ 100 freestyle and 200 medley, but they came through in every other event.

“They're very motivated, and I think going forward, these bigger teams are gonna have to watch out for us, because now we have more boys qualifying for states,” Wright said.

Senior Angel Figueroa continued to top the butterfly while Eddie Hale took the 500 freestyle. Michael Whitaker held down the backstroke and Reed Knowlton captured the breaststroke. Senior Keiran Probert anchored the winning medley team of Whitaker, Knowlton and Figueroa.

Wright swam behind Figueroa, Knowlton and Probert to help with the 200 freestyle, but the senior's best performances came in the sprint race and final relay. His talents were on full display as he broke his own record in the 50, touching the pad at 22.18. This was after he took the 200 freestyle. He ended the boys’ meet by swimming the fastest 100 freestyle time in program history during his leg of the 400 relay.

“I broke two of my own records,” Wright said. “I broke the 100 free record ... by two seconds, and I broke my 50 free record by 0.3, so it was definitely a big experience for me. What I try to represent is motivation to the younger kids.”

He hopes that when he is walking the halls of Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey next winter, his teammates will relate to his accomplishments.

“This is who we are,” Wright said. “We might be small, but we're definitely mighty.”