Upper Dublin races to victories over Souderton
FRANCONIA >> Officially washing away the “January blues” while putting a record-breaking finish to their regular season, the Upper Dublin boys and girls raced to a pair of victories over Souderton Area Friday in a matchup of District One heavyweights.
“It’s fun to just get up and race, and go after it,” said Cardinal senior Rebecca Pendleton, who helped her team set a pool record in the first event of the afternoon. “We’re going into Suburbans and competition there is fierce, so having a team like (Souderton) to go against and compete against is great.
“It really gets us in the mentality of it.”
The Upper Dublin girls were 99-81 winners over Big Red while the Cardinal boys earned a 103-83 victory over the Indians.
“Kinda cranked it up and wanted to see what we could do at the end of the (regular) season. We wanted to get the January blues off so it was a good meet,” Cardinals girls coach Pat Redican said of the most grueling month of the season, starting with training and finishing up with lots of practices and several dual meets.
“The pool records and things like that — that was a pleasant surprise. We just wanted to have some good competition. They lined up pretty much the way I expected them to and I told the girls ‘we gotta get after it,’ and they did.”
The Upper Dublin girls and boys each set three pool records on the way to the Suburban One League non-conference victory.
Said Pendleton, who teamed up with Abbie Amdor, Aly Breslin and Molly Braun in the 200 medley relay to set the pace for the day: “That was fun. (The records were) kind of unexpected, but we came here and we were like ‘you know what? Let’s go for some records. Might as well.’”
The time of 1 minute, 48.10 seconds set the record in the medley, replacing the 1:48.33 by North Penn. Breslin craked out a 2:08.09 to surpass the 2:09.35 by CB East’s Hannah Whitman in the 200 IM, and the 200 free foursome of Breslin, Saemmi Yoon, Amdor and Braun set a record with 1:38.80, replacing the 1:39.01 by North Penn.
On the boys side, the 200 medley team of Jake DiMartile, Matt Jensen, Alex Flynn and Joe Gewartowski finished in pool-record time of 1:36.45 (replacing the 1:37.53 by NP), and DiMartile set a pair of individual records with a 1:56.12 in the 200 IM (Andy Thomas of Hatboro-Horsham had a 1:56.43) and a 51.99 in the 100 back (Storm Krader of Souderton had a 52.39).
It was also a tremendous meet for Souderton, which pushed more competitors into districts and got a great 500 race from Alexa Crossgrove, 100 back and 100 breast wins from Hailey Freed and Clara Burrell, and a 400 free relay victory from Crossgrove, Jordyn Grossman, Burrell and Ellie Hiestand.
The Big Red boys 200 free relay foursome of Michael Dechert, Storm Krader, Jake Kramer and T.J. Yaglenski finished first, and Jake Kramer beat out Upper Dublin’s Kornel Pesti by five hundredths of a second in a thrilling 500 free.
“We got some district cuts — we missed a couple by point zero two — and we had so many personal-best times,” Big Red coach Rob Faccenda said. “I think we’re so well set up for a great conference meet in two weeks. We’re very excited.”
