ORONO — With the third leg of the final relay in the water, Greely junior Dan Spencer reached over his head to stretch, took several deep breaths and climbed onto the starting block.
A few feet away, Ellsworth junior Keith Chandler, the only individual to win two events at this Class B boys’ swimming and diving state championship, did likewise.
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“Sometimes I think I care more about the (400-yard) free relay than I do about my individual events,” Spencer said. “It tops off everything. It’s the whole team effort. Everyone’s tired and they just put in everything they have anyway. It’s just … it’s great.”
Spencer and Chandler stayed even through their first 50 yards but Spencer pulled ahead to win the race and cap a successful title defense for Greely on Monday night at Wallace Pool on the campus of the University of Maine.
“(Chandler) had a fantastic meet,” Spencer said. “He had great times. So I was really glad to out-touch him.”
The victory — in 3 minutes, 24.79 seconds — edged Chandler by a little more than three tenths and completed a relay sweep for the Rangers, who finished with 396 points to runner-up Ellsworth’s 261.
Mount Desert Island was third at 200 followed by Waterville (184), Belfast (128), Foxcroft Academy (123), John Bapst (114), Falmouth (105), Yarmouth (97) and 17 other schools.
Belfast entered the meet as the favorite after an 11-0 season that included a KVAC title but saw its aspirations go up in smoke when seven team members were suspended from school for “a violation of athletic policy,” said Coach Bob Winslow, who said he was not allowed to go into more detail.
“It has been,” he said, “a miserable week.”
Greely Coach Rob Hale wondered how his team would respond to the news of their chief competition falling by the wayside. His answer came in Monday morning’s preliminaries.
“The way we swam (Monday) morning,” Hale said, “we could have gone up against Auburn University and we would have been all right.”
In the finals, Greely took the opening 200 medley relay and never looked back. The Rangers took four places in four individual events — the 50, 100 and 200 freestyles and the 200 individual medley — and three in two others, the 500 free and 100 backstroke.
Individually, Spencer won a spirited 100 free over Mody Gad of Waterville and Greely teammate Ian Mecray. Gad, an exchange student from Egypt, had won the 200 free and Mecray the 50 free.
Mecray was the difference-maker in the 200 free relay with a fast third leg that broke open a close three-way race involving Ellsworth and MDI. Mecray was among a gaggle of Greely swimmers waving their purple T-shirts overhead as they cheered on Spencer and teammates Evan Campbell, Jon Dunnett and Peter Pacent through the final 400 free relay.
Printed on the back of the shirts was this year’s team slogan: I can’t, I have to practice.
“Our team’s been really dedicated this year,” Mecray said. “We’ve had to say this a lot of times to our friends when they’ve asked if we wanted to hang out with them.”
Other individual winners Monday night included Falmouth junior Ryan Conley, who successfully defended his diving title with 290.15 points.
Chandler, of Ellsworth, won the 100 butterfly (52.86) and the 100 breast (1:01.20). Teammate Maks Grover won the 500 free (4:59.55). Nico Schultz of Waterville won the backstroke and Cameron Fadley of Foxcroft Academy won the 200 IM.
Greely’s most unlikely points came from Pacent, a senior who placed sixth in the breast stroke, an event he had swum exactly once before Monday’s preliminaries. There was an open lane in the last dual meet of the season, and Pacent told Hale he’d like to try the breast stroke. Normally a freestyle sprinter, Pacent did so well, “we figured that if we got a couple of our football players, who can’t really do the distance stuff, if we got them in the events instead of me we’d get a couple more splashes,” he said.
Those football players — Kyle Morrison, Jon Higgins and Ethan Wyman — contributed in the sprints and 200 free relay Monday night, freeing Pacent to score in the breast and 200 free as well as two relays.
“We were thinking it would be more of a dual with Belfast,” Pacent said. “But the way it turned out, and the way we swam, I’m pretty confident that no matter what they brought, we could have handled it pretty well.”
Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at: gjordan@pressherald.com
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