Pittsfield Girls Use Team Effort to Snap Monument Mountain Streak

PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- Bronze was golden for the Pittsfield girls swim team on Tuesday.

 

The Generals took third place in all 11 events, and those points helped fuel a 52-42 win over Monument Mountain that gave the Spartans their first dual meet loss since 2013.

 

Monument Mountain finished first in seven of 11 events, but Pittsfield took the next two places in each of those seven races and got individual wins from Caitlin Hall and Szofia Lewis.

 

Pittsfield also won the day’s first event, the 200-yard medley relay and the day’s last, the 400 freestyle relay.

 

Success in the relays and in the races for third place both spoke to the depth on this Pittsfield team.

 

“Those were very important,” Lewis said of the third-place finishes. “Our coach made sure to tell us that every single swimmer matters and every single event. And the girls, they knew what they had to do, every single one of them. They knew they had to beat the next person, and they did it.

 

“I’m so proud, and I’m so happy.”

 

The boys dual meet went a little closer to form as the Monument Mountain boys stayed unbeaten this winter with a 57-37 win over Pittsfield.

 

Henry Albert and Colin Thorp each earned a pair of wins for the Spartans. Albert won the 200 freestyle (2 minutes, 5.87 seconds) and 500 free (5:43.38). Thorp won the 200 individual medley (2:21.60) and 100 breaststroke (1:15.75).

 

Pittsfield’s boys got a pair of wins from Connor Hayford, who outreached Monument’s Ethan Dean for a narrow 24.53-24.90 win in the 50 free and won the 100 free with a time of 55.72.

 

But the biggest smiles of the day belonged to the Pittsfield girls.

 

The Generals went into the last two races with a four-point lead.

 

Lewis won the 100 breaststroke in 1:14.56, and Yael Snowise placed third to extend the lead to 45-39 going into the 400 free relay.

 

There, the quartet of Caitlin Hall, Keira Devine, Jacckie Roccabruna and Jordan Bradford clinched the team win with a first place finish in 4:00.07 to collect five points.

 

“Touching that wall at the end of the 400 free relay, I knew that if we came in first we would have the meet, and it was just an overwhelming feeling,” Bradford said. “I was just so, so happy and so proud of my team. Everybody, every single person on this team who swam today, who wasn’t here today, everybody. I was just so proud of everybody.

 

“It’s overwhelming. I’m just so happy.”

 

While Bradford got the honor of swimming the anchor leg on the meet-clinching quartet, Lewis was at the other end of the pool with the rest of the team screaming her lungs out.

 

“It is so nerve-wracking,” she said. “I’m so proud of the girls for doing that. I just wanted to be there to cheer for them. I did what I could, and I knew I could trust them to do what they had to do, and they did it. And it ended up great.”

 

For the Spartans, who came into the meet with a couple of swimmers on the injured list, it was a tough pill to swallow, but they get another shot at the Generals next Friday at Simon’s Rock. And their coach was heartened by the effort she saw up and down the lineup on Tuesday.

 

“I am very proud of my team,” Jill Svirida said. “I feel like they rose to the occasion in such an amazing and beautiful way. I was brought to tears … several times, just seeing the growth in these athletes and the way they stepped up.

 

“I don’t coach in the rear view mirror, but we did lose some solid swimmers who we’d been with for many years, and that really just created an area for these younger swimmers to really rise up and become leaders and to depend on themselves and each other.”

 

Asa Stone and Maddie Fife each won a pair of races for the Monument Mountain girls. Stone won the 200 IM (2:19.20) and 100 free (57.99). Fife won the 200 free (2:09.81) and 500 free (5:50.82).

 

As the Pittsfield girls celebrated their team win, it is a fair bet that several of its swimmers shared Bradford in thinking about coach Tim Mazzer, who died nearly a year ago during the season.

 

“I knew they had Asa Stone in that last spot in the 400 relay, and I knew I was gonna have to kick it into gear,” Bradford said. “I knew I was going to have to push it really hard.

 

“The whole time, I was just thinking, swim for my team and swim for Coach Tim. This was for him, and this was for us, and we really pushed ourselves to do it.”