BRUNSWICK, Maine — Over the course of the swimming season, it became more and more evident that it was going to be really difficult to beat out the Cheverus High School boys swim team in the state finals.
That theory held true on Wednesday, when the Stags captured their third straight Class A swimming championship with an overwhelming 360 points. Brunswick and Bangor finished second and third, respectively, totaling 260 and 257 points in the same order, while Falmouth (202) and Windham (161) rounded out the top five among 27 scoring teams.
“We’ve been blessed with a bunch of good kids, talented kids,” Cheverus head coach Kevin Haley said. “It really takes a total team effort for this to get done. Brunswick’s a very talented team, tough team, and so is Bangor. It’s nice that we’ve been doing so well and our program seems to be sustainable year after year.”
Both the Dragons and the Rams started out strong with one-two punches in the opening 200-yard medley relay, with Brunswick coming in first with a time of 1 minute, 41.01 seconds and Bangor just over a second behind at 1:42.92.
“They did better than we could have expected,” Brunswick head coach David Bright said about his team’s overall performance. “When you look at all the individual swims and best times, they did a terrific job.”
It boiled down to the last relay of the day to determine the place holders, specifically between Bangor and Brunswick. After a tough disqualification on the Dragons side late in the meet, the Rams trailed by only one point going into the 400-yard freestyle relay. However, a 3:21.48 finish for Brunswick in the second slot was enough to beat Bangor’s time of 3:25.01 and solidify the final standings.
“We knew Cheverus was going to run away with it,” Rams head coach Phil Emery said. “We knew Brunswick was ahead of us and maybe we could sneak up on them.”
A standout swimmer for Lewiston High School was Mathew Charest, who placed second in the 200-yard individual medley. He finished in 1:59.31, two seconds away from Cheverus swimmer Kevin Kane (1:57.66).
Charest also took home a fourth-place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke, completing the event in 1:01.46, just 0.66 seconds behind Bangor’s Liam Reading, who captured second place with a 1:00.78. Rams freshman Colby Prouty locked in a 59.57 time to take home the gold.
Brunswick’s Nate Samson experienced a joyful, yet somewhat frustrating moment in the 100-yard freestyle, completing the event in a speedy 46.64 seconds. The time was fast enough to break the original meet record of 47 seconds set by former Windham High School swimmer Nick Sundquist in 2013. However, Samson was 0.04 seconds short of tying the state record of 46.6 seconds set by former Morse High School standout James Wells.
“It was a little frustrating I guess,” Samson said. “I swam with James when I was little, and I knew how fast he was and everything. It’s exciting that I have next year to try and come back and try to get it.”
Other notable finishes included two gold-medal finishes from Falmouth’s Jake Perron, who took home Performer of the Meet. He finished with a 1:41.32 time in the 200-yard freestyle, as well as a 4:38.71 in the 500-yard freestyle.
Westbrook’s Greg Violette also took home two gold medals, coming in first in both the 100-yard butterfly (52.01) and the 100-yard backstroke.
Kyle Adams of Bangor totaled a whopping 396.25 points in the 1-meter diving event, and Brunswick’s Seth White placed fourth with 276.25 points.