Woodland ends swim season at Class S meet

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BEACON FALLS — The Woodland boys swim team wrapped up a positive season last Wednesday with a 13th-place finish at the Class S state championship meet at Cornerstone Pool in West Hartford.

Woodland finished with 149.5 points. Brookfield outgunned Holy Cross for the team championship with 630 points. The Black and Gold were fifth among Naugatuck Valley League schools, behind Cross, Sacred Heart, Seymour, and Watertown.

The Hawks registered a pair of top-10 individual performances: one by junior Greg Aldrich in the 100-yard breaststroke and the other by junior Riley Clark in diving.

Clark, following up his second straight Naugatuck Valley League diving championship, competed in the diving finals March 6 at Plainville High. He was seeded first in the event, but several divers far surpassed their own seeded scores and pushed Clark down to fourth with his score of 358.65. Holy Cross’ Marcas Racevicius, whom Clark edged to take the NVL title, finished just above Clark in third place.

Aldrich won the B-final of the 100 breaststroke, cruising to a time of 1 minute, 3.77 seconds. He won his heat by more than a second and would have finished eighth in the A-final based on his time.

In other action, Woodland tallied top-15 finishes in all three relays. The Hawks’ 400 freestyle relay team of Jeff Varesio, Joe Flaherty, Zack Arisian, and Aldrich placed 12th overall (fourth in the B-final) in 3:40.11, which would have placed eighth in the A-final. The Hawks’ 200 medley squad of Jake Stow, Aldrich, Varesio, and Noah Scott was 13th overall (fifth in the B-final) in 1:53.55, and the 200 free relay group of Ryan Curtin, Flaherty, Arisian, and Scott was 14th overall in 1:42.16.

Other individual finishers for the Hawks included Aldrich (18th in the 200 individual medley, 2:12.32), Varesio (20th in the 100 free, 53.79; 21st in the 50 free, 24.59), Arisian (22nd in the 100 butterfly, 1:01.23), and Curtin (22nd in the 100 breast, 1:11.15). Flaherty also won a swim-off in the 50 free by one-tenth of a second.