The Pacers represented themselves well at their host invite, with the girls taking top honors and the boys nabbing a place in the top three at Saturday’s Hayes Swimming and Diving Invitational at OWU’s Meek Aquatics Center.
The girls won with 429 points. Bishop Watterson finished second with 350 while Westerville South rounded out the top three with 255. Hilliard Darby (119), Hilliard Davidson (89) and Buckeye Valley (64) smoothed out the scoring summary.
The boys, meanwhile, finished third with 207 points. Davidson won the team title with 350, Darby finished second with 310, Westerville South was fourth with 193, Buckeye Valley finished fifth with 66 and Watterson closed with 61.
On the girls’ side, Hayes made a splash in the relay events, picking up first-place points in three of the four.
Elizabeth Abahazi, Maddie Richardson, Rena Ouyang and Valerie Keller teamed up to take top honors in the 200 medley relay (1:54.75); Keller, Kailyn Smith, Lauren Ertz and Ouyang combined to win the 200 freestyle relay (1:42.94); and Emily Abahazi, Smith, Ertz and Elizabeth Abahazi touched first in the 400 freestyle relay (3:58.04).
Individual standouts included Keller, who earned first-place points in the 50-yard freestyle with an effort of 25.72 seconds; and Kelsie Keeder, who won the 1-meter diving event with a score of 176.10.
As for the Pacer boys, Kael Gannon won the 100 butterfly (55.15 seconds), Aidan Stojkov won the 100 backstroke (58.46 seconds) and Paul Carter won the 100 breaststroke (1:01.57).
Hayes also won a relay, taking top honors in the 400 freestyle relay as Gannon, Caleb Bucher, Stojkov and Lucas Pape combined to finish in 3:24.94.
Dylan Fisher posted Buckeye Valley’s best individual finish, closing fourth in the boys 100 freestyle (56.48 seconds). He was also a member of the 200 freestyle relay team, joining forces with Jacob Fisher, Lathan McGraw and Carson Vaulx to finish third (1:46.65).
BV’s girls 200 freestyle relay quartet of Kim Langhirt, Skyelar Rock, Caitlin Mylin and Gianna Garnett was also solid, finishing sixth in 1:59.44. Langhirt was steady as an individual as well, swimming to a sixth-place performance in the 100 backstroke in 1:08.71.
