Swimming
By: John E. Powers
The result wasn’t what the Hopewell Valley Central High School swimming team wanted, but the performance in last week’s season-opening meet against Pennington was just fine, according to Bulldogs coach Laurie Gordon.
Pennington recorded a 95-75 co-ed win, but the Bulldogs swam well enough to give Gordon and girls coach Bill DeHaven a lot of reason to smile. Will McNeese won the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:58.43 a 4 ½ second drop from his best time last year. Senior Darby Driscoll won the 200 individual medley in 2:21.97, Billy Dunne (24.69) and Ned Foster (24.75) went 1-2 in the 50 freestyle, and the 200 freestyle relay of Greg Stolowski, Kristin Cuprvinski, Driscoll and Foster went 1:45.23 to win
"We were thrilled with the meet," Gordon said. "Everyone swam great times. We swam two seconds above or below last year’s times already."
McNeese’s time was good enough to qualify for the states, Gordon said.
"He qualified last year with a time of 5:03 or something and then he got mononucleosis," Gordon said. "He was so sick. This was so big for him."
Marcella Nehrbass and Brandon Hullings set Pennington records. Nehrbass took third to Dunne and Foster in the 50-yard freestyle, but posted the fastest Pennington time in 25.58. Hullings won the 100 free in 50.84, breaking the previous Pennington mark (50.93) set by Randy Betz in 1997.
"It was a very close meet halfway through," Gordon said. "It was a really good start to our season. Nobody sat down the whole meet. Everybody was really active and involved. That’s what we want to see the whole season. Both team’s top dogs did very well. Pennington is just very good. They have 30 kids on the team, and nine of them swim on outside teams."
The Bulldogs were scheduled to swim another very good team Thursday in defending Central Jersey Public A sectional champion Hillsborough at the Hillsborough YMCA. Then on Saturday, the Bulldogs were scheduled to compete in the Knights Relay at West Windsor-Plainsboro North.