By Paul Vozzella
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
Medfield boys and girls swim team both unfortunately took a dive versus Dover-Sherborn on Friday. The girls took a 86-58 loss while the boys fell 96-68. The boys remain winless while the girls move to 1-2 in their meets.
“I keep telling our team we’re small, but mighty,” said head coach Karen O’Connell. “They have a very small squad but they all work really hard together, as a team, to do their best. We actually had a bunch of first place finishes.”
Seniors John Barrette, Sophie Shield and senior Greta Ten Hagen ignited the meet in one meter diving. Shield and Ten Hagen, who have already qualified for states, were impressive.
Shield executed an inward pike dive and backward pike dive with judge scores of 13.5 and 14, respectively. Ten Hagen’s best dive came on an inward one-and-a-half somersault tuck dive with a respective score of 14.
Still in his pursuit of qualifying for states, Barrette’s best dive was a forward one-and-half somersault which knotted him a judge score of 12, respectively.
Amongst their other performances, junior Chase Patten qualified for states in the boys 200 yard individual medley (2:16.40) in a close finish (second place 2:17.78).
Senior David Sapozhnikov also stood out in the 100 yard boy’s fly event (56.51), finishing over ten seconds ahead of second place.
Outside of Patten’s individual medley effort and Sapozhnikov, the Warriors had four other first place finishes coming in the 200 yard boy’s medley relay (1:49.12), 200 yard boy’s free (1:52.79), 200 yard boy’s free relay (1:47.57) and 100 yard boy’s backstroke (1:01.25).
This was Medfield’s first meet in a couple of weeks and O’Connell noted how the team is recovering from the holiday season.
“I think tonight maybe wasn’t their best but I think it’s hard after this Christmas break,” she said. “It’s hard. We’re getting right back in, though. We started yesterday. We swam fast and we swam a lot in practice.”
Medfield had their next meet versus Hopkinton on January 7.
