Greely High took home a pair of championship plaques from the Class B state swim meets last February, one for boys and one for girls.
This year the Rangers enter the state meets as underdogs, according to Coach Rob Hale.
The Belfast boys and Mt. Desert Island girls come out ahead of Greely according to seeding sheets turned in by coaches Tuesday.
“Class B girls will be quality versus quantity,” said Hale of the only state meet scheduled today. “We have a lot of the near-the-top seeds but we don’t have the number of kids MDI has in position to score.”
Trials for today’s Class B girls’ meet are scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. at the University of Maine.
After the field has been whittled to those in the championship and consolation heats, the swimmers and divers will break until the evening finals, scheduled to kick off at 5 p.m.
The past three years have seen three champions in Class B girls, with Falmouth and McAuley preceding Greely.
Not since Old Town won the last of six straight titles in 1997 has a team outside Cumberland County taken home the top prize.
The Class B boys’ meet will take place Monday at UMaine under the same time schedule as today’s meet. Belfast, which is after its first state title since 2002, has a roughly 20-point advantage over Greely on paper. Much of the difference comes in diving, where four of the seven divers who qualified hail from Belfast. Greely’s only diver is Isaak Emery.
Even so, the Greely boys will be competitive.
“Class B boys will go down to the last event,” Hale predicted. “I told the boys, ‘We may not win this but we will remember it.’ It’s going to be a classic.”
The Class A meets are scheduled for Monday (girls) and Tuesday (boys) at Bowdoin College.
For both meets, trials begin at 10 a.m. and finals not until 7 p.m.
Morse High of Bath is the defending girls’ state champion. The Shipbuilders have nobody among the 16 divers who qualified for the meet – three of the top six qualifying divers belong to Bangor – but Coach Todd Marco said his girls will put up a spirited defense.
“The girls will really have to step it up a notch to defend the title,” he said. “Bangor will be tough. They have some really fast freshmen and three good divers.”
Bangor is also favored in the Class A boys’ meet Tuesday.
The Rams have won four straight state titles and qualified three swimmers among the top 12 in five individual events.
Among the other four individual events, Bangor qualified two among the top 12 in backstroke, breast stroke and diving, and three among the top 15 in the 50-yard freestyle.
Windham, Cape Elizabeth and Massabesic have some top-line swimmers to compete with Bangor, but none has equivalent depth.
“We have trained hard this week mentally and physically,” Marco said. “We’re ready to swim fast.”
Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:
gjordan@pressherald.com
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