By Rich Palzewic
Sports Editor
NEENAH – Hot off its Fox River Classic Conference victory last week, the Bay Port boys’ swimming team continued its winning ways by winning the WIAA Division 1 Neenah Sectional Feb. 9.
The Pirates’ 387 points easily outdistanced runner-up Appleton North/East by 93 points to win their third straight sectional title.
Green Bay United (GBU) finished fifth with 232 points in the 11-team event.
Only the top finisher in each event at the six sectionals in the state was guaranteed to advance to the WIAA state meet at the UW-Madison Natatorium Feb. 15-16.
“Evidently, other teams didn’t feel like they could beat us in overall team points, so they sacrificed some individual event points to load up their relays,” said Bay Port head coach Steve Jeffers. “I questioned that decision, but now I know they made the right one. All of our guys had incredible swims. We knew the relays were going to be difficult to win. We wanted to start the individual events off by making a statement in the 200 freestyle by finishing all three of our guys in the top four (seeded 2, 4 and 6). Ben Storby, Payton Schilz and Lucas Thibert succeeded by going 2-3-4. We never looked back after that. We went 1-4-7 in the 100 freestyle, 1-3 in the 500 freestyle and 2-3-4 in the 100 backstroke. With our relays, even though we didn’t win any, we put up some great times, including a new team record in the 400 freestyle and close to team records in the other two.”
Bay Port event winners were Victor Kostov (200-yard individual medley – 2:00.48), Griffin Hawley (100 freestyle – 47.47) and Ozan Kalafat (500 freestyle – 4:48.08; 100 breaststroke – 1:00.21).
Like Kalafat, GBU’s Kaiser Neverman was a double-event winner in the 50 freestyle (21.17) and 100 butterfly (48.95).
Neverman’s time in the butterfly will be the top seed at the state meet by 1.55 seconds.
With the other top 18 times in the state in each event also qualifying for Madison, GBU’s 200 medley relay team (1:38.01 – Connor Howe, Macoy Socha, Neverman, Riley Komp) advanced, as did Bay Port’s in the same event (1:38.11 – Kostov, Kalafat, Storby, Kyle Zerbel).
Both teams also advanced in the 200 freestyle relay (BP, 1:28.58 – Hawley, Storby, Schilz, Keaton Spindler; GBU, 1:29.90 – Komp, Zachary Karnz, Howe, Neverman), while Bay Port’s 400 freestyle relay team did the same (3:14.83 – Hawley, Zerbel, Schilz, Kalafat).
Hawley (50 freestyle, 21.54), Thibert (500 freestyle, 4:56.01), Kostov (100 backstroke, 54.33) and Zerbel (100 backstroke, 55.26) will also be heading to Madison in their respective individual events based on times.