On Saturday, Jan. 3, the Cathedral Prep swim team took part in the second annual Erie County Aquatic Hall of Fame Relay meet at McDowell High School. For those readers who do not know swimming, every normal high school meet consists of eight individual events and three relays, for a total of 11 events in the following order: 4 x 50-yard medley relay, 200-yard freestyle, 200-yard IM, 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly, 500-yard freestyle, 4 x 50-yard freestyle relay, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard breaststroke, and at last, the 4 x 100-yard freestyle relay. This relay meet served to break up the monotony.
This meet, as the name would suggest, consisted entirely of relays. The order of events was the 4 x 100-yard medley relay, 4 x 800-yard freestyle relay, 3 x 100-yard backstroke relay, 3 x 100-yard breaststroke relay, 4 x 50-yard freestyle relay, 3 x 100-yard butterfly, 850-yard crescendo relay, and at the end, as always, the 4 x 100-yard freestyle relay. Cathedral Prep won every single event. Out of the three other teams there (Fairview, McDowell, and Mercy), none of them could put together even one relay that could defeat Prep.
Cathedral Prep junior Rex Riley set a pool record at McDowell after leading off the 3 x 100 breastroke with a 58.54. Sophomore Anthony Squeglia, senior Norman Stark, freshman Alec Thomas, and junior Thomas Squeglia broke the meet record in the 4 x 200 freestyle with a time of 7:33.35. They each split in the low 1:50s. Anthony Squelia helped set another meet record along with Pat Steele and Reid Mercatoris-Morrison with a time 2:47.95. Anthony went 56.39, Pat went 55.98, and Reid went 55.58. So far, this season tastes like victory.