ORONO, Maine — The Mount Desert Island High School girls won the 38th Annual Penobscot Valley Conference Swimming and Diving Championships held at the University of Maine Saturday scoring 234 points, 46 points ahead of second-place Bangor High.
Foxcroft Academy, winners of the meet’s final event, the 400-freestyle relay, finished third with 188 points. Ellsworth and John Bapst tallied 159 and 155 points, respectively, to finish fourth and fifth in the 14-team meet.
MDI coach Tony Demuro, whose team swam without one of their premier swimmers (Avalon Kerley) due to illness as did Bangor (Hannah Wood), also a result of illness, said following his team’s win, “This is a great group of girls. They work really hard and they are a close knit group. With us missing Avalon, the girls really pulled together and competed.”
The champions won four events including two of the meet’s three relays. Junior Lydia DaCorte, who swam the butterfly leg on MDI’s gold-medal opening event win, the medley relay, cruised to an individual gold in the 200 free (1 minute, 59 seconds), seven seconds ahead of silver medalist Jenna Clukey of Foxcroft. DaCorte turned at 28.1 in the 100 butterfly and swam the fastest second half of the race in the field to finish in 1:00.8, fractions ahead of George Stevens Academy’s Ava Sealander’s 1:01.7 to collect her second individual race victory.
Sealander, a sophomore, won the 200 individual medley (2:17.9) in the first half of the meet..
DaCorte also anchored the winning 200-free relay in 25.2 as MDI finished in 1:48.8 to Bangor’s 1:50.7.
Demuro noted the performance of his entire team.
“Our girls in the early heats of the events swam well. It is always nice in a meet like this to see big drops from some of the swimmers who finish their season at the PVCs,” he said.
Ellsworth’s Ellie Clarke joined DaCorte in winning two individual events. The speedy freshman won the 50 free (25.8) and the 100 free (57.3).
In the 50, the Eagles scored 29 points when Sidney Hamilton, also a freshman, finished second (26.7). Clarke and Hamilton were the meet’s only two racers to claim a first and a second place in the same event for their team.
Sophomore Erin Aucoin won the 500 free (5:42) as the Brewer swimmer led the race at the 50 and swam away from the field to win by nine seconds. Bangor’s Rachel Hand was second.
Coach Gary Isherwood’s John Bapst squad, the silver medalist in the 200-medley relay at 2:00.1, received a first-place finish in the 100 backstroke from Laura Skacel. The sophomore, who gave Bapst the early lead in the 200 medley relay with a 29.6 backstroke leg, led at the 50 of the 100 backstroke by five-tenths but then raced a 32.4-second 50 for a 1:03.1 finish, two seconds in front of Foxcroft’s Avery Carroll.
Carroll’s teammate Alice Russo scored third in 1:06.1.
Carroll and Russo joined Clukey and Gabie Johnson, winner of the 100 breaststroke (1:13), in the 400 free relay to overtake Bangor on the final leg to finish in 3:57.5 to the Rams’ 3:57.7. Clukey, anchoring the Pony relay, split 56.7.
The only diver to score 300 points, Old Town junior Kassidy Harriman, recorded 332.15 points to win the 11-dive competition. Bangor freshman Ella Stone finished second (247.30 points), one point ahead of MDI junior Chelsea Schroeder.