MDI cruises to third straight PVC crown

BANGOR – The Mount Desert Island boys swimming and diving team continued its run in championship meets Friday night as the Trojans won their third straight Penobscot Valley Conference boys title at the Bangor YWCA’s Aloupis Pool.

The two-time defending state champs scored 3691/2 points for the conference crown, which came 10 days before MDI will seek its third Class B state title in a row.

“We came in hoping and just wanting to do our best,” said Trojan junior Reid Swanson. “Everyone did best times, so that helps a lot.”

Bangor, a 22-time PVC champion, emerged from a meet-long, back-and-forth battle for second place with the runner-up title. The Rams scored 196 points, two more than third-place Old Town.

Ellsworth, which was in the mix for second place, wound up in fourth place (163 points) and John Bapst of Bangor took fifth (128).

Old Town opened the meet with a win in the 200-yard medley relay, but the Trojans rolled from there.

MDI had a 40-point lead on Old Town by the end of the 200 individual medley thanks to four finishes in the top 12 in that event, with Justin Gilmartin’s third place leading the Trojan pack. Gilmartin would go on to win the 100 butterfly with Swanson finishing second.

MDI didn’t rack up too many first-place finishes – although the Trojans’ 400-free relay win was a thriller as Kevin Staples held off Ellsworth’s John Hessler and Old Town’s David Martinez in the final yards – but the Trojans’ seconds and thirds, along with wins in the 200 and 400 freestyle relays, sealed the victory.

“We’ve got a lot of young kids on our team and some of the best times on the team were from guys who you’re not going to recognize,” MDI coach Tony DeMuro said. “All those guys swam well. … A lot of people haven’t heard of them but they’d be studs on other teams.”

MDI’s top swimmers performed well, too. Frank Carbone won the 200 free and placed second in the 100 backstroke, while Staples earned second-place finishes in the 50 free and the 500 free.

MDI’s Sargeant Pepper was the runner-up in both the 100 free and the 200 free, while Nigel Storer also provided points with a fourth in the 100 back and a sixth in the IM.

Gilmartin, Staples, Swanson, and Pepper took the 200-free relay, while Carbone, Pepper, and Josh Radford opened things up for Staples in the exciting distance relay. Their 3:23.77 broke a pool record from 1999 held by Bangor High.

“That was the way we want to see it end,” DeMuro said. “It couldn’t be any better than that with three teams going after it.”

Ellsworth wound up second and Old Town was third.

With the defending champs so far out front, Bangor, Old Town and Ellsworth were left to fight over second place. Hessler held off Staples to win the 50 freestyle and Ellsworth’s Hernan Rave placed seventh, while Old Town didn’t have any swimmers place in the top 12.

Bangor jumped ahead of both Old Town and Ellsworth after Brian Wardwell won the diving with 320.90 points followed by Bangor teammate Peter Buck and another Ram took eighth.

But Bangor’s 20-point edge on Ellsworth didn’t hold up for long. The Eagles started to chip into the Ram score in the next event as Ellsworth’s Hernan Rave took third in the 100 butterfly.

Hessler picked up a big win in another exciting race. He came from behind in the final length of the 100 free and just touched out Pepper by four one-hundreths of a second.

Old Town roared ahead of Ellsworth and got within one point of Bangor after the 100 free as Martinez, Jacob Shanley and Jeff Dow went 3-4-7.

The race for second place got even closer after the 500 free as Brian Batson’s first-place finish – he turned on his jets in the final 150 yards to get past Staples – put Ellsworth and Bangor in a tie for third with 115 points apiece, just two behind Old Town.

Bangor and Old Town eventually gained some separation from Ellsworth, and the Rams had a 4-point lead with two events left in the meet.

Shanley also cruised to a win in the 100 back with a time of 54.61 seconds, setting a meet and pool record in the process. The old PVC record of 54.69 was set by MDI’s Jamie Cunningham in 1997.

But it wasn’t enough to pass the Rams, whose fifth in the final event of the evening, the 400 free relay, was enough to hold off Old Town’s third.