By Sean Richards, Sports Writer
Picking right up from where it left off last year, the South Brunswick High School swimming team got its season off to a solid start over the last week.
It stated with the Raider Relays at North Brunswick on Saturday, where both the boys and girls came through with respectable third-place showings.
The girls were then back in action on Monday and lost to Bishop Ahr, 105-65. Even here there was a silver lining because Bishop Ahr is as good a team as the girls will face in the regular season and their times were encouraging.
”Bishop Ahr is the defending GMC champion and very strong,” said coach John Harding. “It’s kind of tough opening against them on the first (dual) meet of the season. But I went back and looked, and we were pretty much faster in each event that we were from last year. I thought the girls looked good. They stepped it up.”
Against Bishop Ahr the Vikings won three events. Liz Samtur won the 100 fly in 1:04.5, while talented freshman Gessica Charniga wasted no time living up to her advance billing by capturing the 100 IM and 100 breast stroke races.
Another good performance was turned in by Sarah Malinski, who swam the 500 free in 6:11. That was eight seconds better than her best from last year and indicative of how a lot of hard work during the off season is going to pay off this year.
The girls had two place-first showings at the season-opening Raider Relays, winning the 200 medley relay in a time of 2:02.30 and the 200 free in 1:49.86. Swimming in both of those races were Lisa Majchrzak, Carmen Chan, Abby Weingarten and Danielle Bartolotta.
”Overall I thought we did pretty well,” said Harding of the relays. “We had a lot of good times for the first time out.”
Ditto for the boys, who broke two school records at the Raider Relays en route to their third-place showing. The boys might have done even better in the team standings if they hadn’t been disqualified in one event that cost them valuable points in terms of possibly finishing second.
In the 200 free relay, the boys came in first with a new school standard time of 1:35.61. Swimming in that race Mike Socienski, Will Samtur, James Kugel and Tyler Wardlow.
The second South Brunswick record came in the 200 medley relay where the boys finished second. Wardlow, Henry Ma, Brian Lee and Socienski combined for a 1:48.27, which obliterated the old record by over two seconds.
Both the boys and girls were to have competed against Old Bridge Wednesday. Upcoming events include home meets against East Brunswick Monday and Piscataway Wednesday.

