Girls' Swimming: Lexington's Depth Sinks Belmont in League Showdown

"That hurts," said long-time Belmont High School Girls' Head Coach Ev Crosscup after the finish of the 200 yard freestyle relay race. His teams finished second, fourth and fifth against hosts Lexington High School, losing six more points to the Minutemen. 

The Marauders were down by 10 points with the number of events remaining down to a handful.

"We need something to happen," said Crosscup.

But what happened began in the middle of the match where Belmont could not match the depth Lexington held in the freestyle – the most basic of swimming strokes.

So despite an all-world performance by sophomore Jessie Blake-West and taking an early lead in the meet, Belmont saw their opportunity for the school's first-ever outright Middlesex League championship swept aside by Lexington, 90-80, at the Middlesex Tech swimming pool Friday evening, Oct. 25.

Even a rare disqualification in what would have given Belmont a sweep in the 100 breaststroke and provide the Marauders a three-point lead going into final event, Lexington's first and third place finish in the 400 freestyle relay would have given the Minutemen the meet victory despite the ruling.

"Everybody swam their hearts out so I don't have any regrets there. We just didn't have enough. It was that simple," he said. 

That strength was evident in the 100 free where Lexington took the top three spots and touched 1-2 in the 50 free as well as the second and third relay swimmers in each of the freestyle relays. 

Minuteman Jayne Vogelzang dominated the long-distance free's while anchoring two relay victories contributing nearly a third of Lexington's points. 

"I said all year long that our Achilles' heel was short-distance freestyle," said Crosscup. "And that was really exposed here today." 

But it was Blake-West who dominated the pool, not just contributing on the first event, the medley relay (which each of four participant swims one of the four individual strokes) and dominating the 200 individual medley in a quick 2 minutes, 15.54 second, but setting a season's best in her specialty, the 100 butterfly, dipping under one minute with a new standard of 59.89 seconds. 

After Blake-West's fly victory, Belmont led by 10, 44-34. But the next three events swung the numbers the Minuteman's way as they even the score, 47-47 in the next event, sweeping the 100 free with Lexington's Briony Waite winning in 57.22.

By the time of the 100 backstroke and three events remaining, it was the Marauders looking up at a 10 point deficit. But a strong race by Maya Nagashima (just outreached by Lexington's Maddy Keohane, 1:03.60 to 1:03.76), Angela Li in third and Elizabeth Levy in fourth gave Belmont nine points to the Minuteman's seven leading up to the 100 breast stroke, the penultimate race. 

And it appeared that Belmont would take the maximum points as Belmont dominated the event with Emily Quinn (1:10.82), Sarah Osborn and Klaudia Nagrabska easily going one, two, three.

But the umpires declared Nagrabska had violated a rule and disqualified her, reducing Belmont's point advantage from 10 to 4 and resulting in the Marauders trailing by four points in the final event, the 400 free relay.

With Lexington swimming previous winners Waite, Vogelzang and Keohane in its top relay and loading up its second relay team with those who finished second and third in earlier events left little to chance as they finished first and third, enough to take the meet and the league crown.

While the Lexington side of the pool erupted in cheers and yells, more than a few Marauders left with tears having worked extremely hard preparing for the match.

"Credit to Lexington. They swam well and they beat us," said Crosscup.