SEWELL — Hillsborough High School girls made history at the NJSIAA Meet of Champions finals at Gloucester County Institute of Technology.
Not only did the Raiders sweep the relays in Sunday’s finals after winning all three relays in the preliminaries a day earlier, they also broke meet records for each race.
Lindsay Temple, Rachel Stoddard, Julieyanna Parker and her sister, Jacquelynn Parker, started off strong. They won the first event, the 200 medley relay, with a time of 1:45.72, shattering the meet record of 1:46.33 that they set in the preliminaries.
The Raiders went on to win the 200 freestyle relay (1:35.31), again breaking the meet record of 1:36.01 they set in the preliminaries. And in the final relay, the 400 free, Hillsborough clocked 3:28.32, to put down the 2009 record of 3:30.19 set by Montgomery.
“I feel really proud about my swim,” said Stoddard, who split the breaststroke leg in the medley. “I’m proud that the girls gave it their all and we all split really fast. We’ve been wanting this since our freshman year and to finally have it now my last year is incredible for me. I hope that the girls carry on next year.”
Teammate Jacquelynn Parker, also a senior, echoed the sentiment.
“We came in wanting this,” Parker said. This is what we’ve were looking forward to all year, and just the fact that we came in and did it by more than we thought we would, is just an incredible feeling. I honestly couldn’t be happier ending the season like this.”
In the 200 free relay, several area schools performed well behind Hillsborough. Westfield placed second (1:37.33), and Pingry came in third (1:37.96). New Providence touched sixth and Hunterdon Central finished in eighth place. And in the 400 free relay, Westfield placed second (3:30.48), Pingry finished fourth (3:33.57) and Hunterdon Central clocked 3:34.88 for fifth place.
Pingry’s outstanding freshman, Ingrid Shu, seeded No. 1 for the 200 free, touched first in that event (1:49.19), swimming even faster than her winning preliminary time. She also clocked 50.70 to win the 100 free, for which she was the top seed. And Shu contributed to Big Blue’s relays.
Westfield’s top-seeded Caroline Baldwin also won two individual events, finishing the 50 free in 23.28. And she touched first in the 100 backstroke (55.49).
“I was very happy,” Baldwin said. “We haven’t had a Westfield individual win since 1979 so I was happy I could do that for my team.”
Top-seeded Hannah Matheson of Montgomery won the 100 butterfly with a time of 55.59, while second-seeded Carly Whitmer of Mount St. Mary placed fourth (56.58), and Plainfield’s Savannah Llewellyn placed seventh (57.62).
Hunterdon Central’s Holly Christensen, seeded No. 2 for the 50 free, finished third with a time of 23.78. Christensen also won a third-place medal in the 100 free (51.44).
Hillsborough’s Lindsay Temple, the second seed, notched a third-place finish in the 100 backstroke (56.15). Teammate Julieyanna Parker placed third for the 200 free (1:50.93), and Westfield junior Sarah Cronin placed seventh in the 100 free (52.02).
Senior Jodie Thompson of Scotch Plains-Fanwood placed fourth in the 100 breaststroke (1:04.28).
Pingry’s boys, three-time defending champions in the relays, did not get a chance to repeat their sweep at the NJSIAA Meet of Champions swim finals.
Big Blue placed second in the first event, the 200 medley relay (1:35.76) behind Shawnee. Pingry, which lost some strong seniors last year, was seeded fifth. Bridgewater-Raritan placed fourth (1:36.40) and Hunterdon Central finished seventh in the medley relay.
But Pingry, the top seed for the 200 free relay, notched a time of 1:25.87 to win, and also touched first in the 400 free relay (3:10.54). Two out of three is still good.
Hillsborough placed fourth for the 200 free relay (1:27.21) and Westfield finished seventh (1:29.22).
Top-seeded Dylan Sali of Bridgewater-Raritan touched first in the 200 IM with a time of 1:51.00. Sali placed second in the 100 backstroke (49.60), for which he was the top seed. Sali contributed to his team’s relays as well.
Pingry’s top-seeded Sebastian Lutz won the 50 free with a time of 20.98, and contributed to the two winning relays.
“I wouldn’t say not sweeping the relays is a disappointment because we performed better than we thought we would,” Sali said. “I very overwhelmed, to say the least, because last year I didn’t even make the finals.”
Other medalists include Zack Warner, who placed second in the breaststroke (56.47); Hillsborough’s Brad Zdroik clocked third in the 100 freestyle (46.31); Bridgewater-Raritan’s Jesse Novak placed fifth in the 50 free (21.50). Pingry’s Will LaCosta touched seventh in the 100 butterfly (51.32); and Westfield’s John Lindros finished 13th in the 200 free (1:45.41).