Amity Shows Its Strength Over Rams

 As the boys swim meet wore on, it Amity's dominance was showing through. More and more swimmers wearing black caps with a large gold "A" were touching the wall first in the evening's events.

Cheshire ( 3-1) had its bright moments and gained valuable experience, but the Spartans (5-0) had too much speed, strength and depth for the Rams in a 105-78 Southern Connecticut Conference victory Tuesday night at the Orange Community Pool.

"We had some good swims. We didn't have all the good swims that we needed, but Amity is a real quality opponent," Cheshire coach Fran Connolly said. "We see these guys again in Class L, so we'll keep working and try to hang with them better in the Class L meet. A lot of credit to them, how strong and deep and versatile they are right now."

The meet started with a close race in the 200-yard medley relay in which Amity (1:44.42) with Robert Rosner, Eric Holden, A.J. Pite and Jake Laser held off Cheshire (1:44.76).

From there Amity's Sam Guerra was a double individual winner with a victory in the 200 freestyle (1:51.38) and a dominating performance in the 500 free (5:01.46), more than eight seconds ahead of teammate Charlie Pite (5:09.83). (see last leg in first video)

Kyle Lemere also won two events for Amity with firsts in the 50 (23.61) and 100 (51.82) freestyles.

"I was just happy. As they've been doing all year, everybody seems to be getting a little faster, a little faster," Amity coach Todd Rainey said. "It's the whole team. They get so up for it and everybody just responds very well."

Greg Han took two events for Cheshire, first with a dramatic finish in the 200 individual medley (see second video) in which Han (1:58.71) came from behind to touch out Holden by .11 of a second, and then in the 100 butterfly in 55.77.

"Eric Holden, his second-place time in the IM was just phenomenal," Rainey said. "It was just a bang-bang finish. That probably would have been a top heat time at the State Open meet last year. That's fast."

Cheshire's Ray Chen (59.65) and Hevin Na (1:00.45) went 1-2 in the 100 backstroke, and the Rams' 400 freestyle relay of Brendan Smalec, Chen, Na and Dan Mongillo won in 3:40.06. Matt Annenberg (182.15 points) and Tesni Phillips (143.65) took first and second for Cheshire in 1-meter diving.

"I was not displeased with some of our times," Connolly said. "We had a percentage of kids, in certain races, who really put up good times. We had a lot of kids who had good meets. We just didn't have enough across the board in some events to keep the meet close.

"A double winner was Greg Han, but we had a lot of kids who did best times of the season," Connolly added. "Our 100 freestyle kids (Na and Matt Richardson, both under 54 seconds) had best times, Ray Chen had a good meet. We're looking at team effort, not so much individual stuff. These guys (the Spartans) are wicked strong right now. The points kind of got away from us."

Other victories for Amity came in the 200 freestyle relay of Laser, Chris Woodington, Guerra and Lemere in 1:36.94 and Holden's winning effort in the 100 breaststroke (1:00.03.)

"If we keep doing this, we're going to be very happy this year," Rainey said.

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