St. Joe Girls Beat Pittsfield in Dramatic Fashion
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The St. Joseph girls 4-by-100 relay team won the last event of the day to give its team a two-point margin of victory over Pittsfield on Friday afternoon in the Boys' and Girls' Club pool.
Aileen Archambault, Mary Kirsimagh, Katie Nugai and Jessie Tobin finished in 4 minutes, 15.57 seconds to edge Pittsfield's top quartet, which finished in 4:19.16.
The six points for the Crusaders gave them a 48-46 win in the team competition and St. Joe's third win in six dual meets this winter.
It also gave St. Joseph an emotional win against one of its rivals.
"This meet last year was a little dramatic, as we had a big, unfortunate event happen that put us down a swimmer in the middle of the meet," St. Joe coach Shannon McMahon said. "We ended up losing it last year when it would have been the same deal as today -- last relay, close meet.
"I think they really wanted it. They worked hard.
"It's always nice when we beat the other city schools."
Friday's meet certainly was not free of drama.
After Archambault swam a 1:16.22 to win the 100 backstroke by less than a second, she appeared to be in some physical distress and needed help from McMahon to get out of the pool. But two events later, she was ready to swim the leadoff leg in the decisive relay.
"She's fine," McMahon said. "She doesn't usually swim backstroke for me, so she winded herself quite a bit. She dropped two seconds off her time.
"I was a little worried. I told her to breath because she had to come back in the relay."
As the meet wound down to the last couple of events, every point was key, and St. Joe, which trailed by four points with three races left, picked up a couple of big third-place finishes down the stretch to put itself in position for the winner-take-all relay at the end.
In that 100 back, Anita Curtin finished third by just less than two seconds, and in the 100 breast stroke, Roma Sabino finished third by a second and a half to make it 42-42 going to the finale.
There was no drama on the boys side, at least in the team competition. St. Joseph had just two swimmers, who competed in a total of four events. Pittsfield's Greg Fournier was the star of what amounted to an intrasquad scrimmage, winning the 200 free (2:14.81) and 500 free (6:06.75) while also swimming on the Generals' top 200 and 400 free relays.
For the Pittsfield girls, Hannah King and Theresa Murphy won the 500 free (6:39.50) and 200 individual medley (2:37.03), respectively. They also teamed with Jessie Marsh and Lindsay Neuberger to win the 200 medley relay (2:18.79).