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11/14/2018 11:00 PMThe Old Lyme-Valley Regional (OL-VR) girls’ swimming program was represented by a handful of swimmers at the Class M State Championship that was held at Wesleyan University on Nov. 13. OL-VR scored a total of 146 points to finish in 13th place out of the 23 teams that competed at the meet.
Three days prior to the State Championship, OL-VR’s swimmers competed at the Class M Qualifying meet that took place at East Hartford High School on Nov. 11. Several athletes improved upon their qualifying times with their performances in the finals. When all was said and done, OL-VR’s 13th-place performance in the Class M finals marked a two-spot improvement from last season, when it finished in 15th place at states.
The best performance of the championship for OL-VR came from sophomore Connie Pan, who recorded a fifth-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 25.75 seconds. Pan scored 24 points with her fifth-place performance after having swam a slightly faster time of 25.70 seconds at the qualifying. Pan also took sixth place in the 100 freestyle by swimming a time of 55.95 seconds at the Class M finals. She had previously finished with a mark of 55.82 in the qualifying meet.
Also at the Class M State Championship, sophomore Kaeleigh O’Donnell earned a top-10 finish in an event for OL-VR. O’Donnell posted a ninth-place finish in the 100 breaststroke behind a time of 1:12.68, scoring 18 points. O’Donnell outpaced her qualifying time of 1:13.95 by more than a second with her showing at the finals. She also scored seven points by placing 18th place in the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:24.92, which was a little more than half-a-second faster than her qualifying time of 2:25.66.
Additionally for individual events, freshman Loretta Cecchini took 19th place in the 100 freestyle by swimming a time of 59.52 to earn six points for OL-VR. This result marked an improvement over her qualifying time of 59.96. The freshman also competed in the 200 freestyle and earned four points with her 21st-place finish and a time of 2:09.07, bettering her qualifying time of 2:09.55.
OL-VR also scored 64 points behind a pair of 11th-place finishes in relay races at states. In the 200 medley relay, the quartet of senior Kimberly Berardis, O’Donnell, Cecchini, and Pan earned 32 points with a time of 2:03.68, which was more than a second better than their qualifying time of 2:04.91. Cecchini, O’Donnell, and Pan later joined forces with freshman Zoe Cike in the 400 freestyle relay, and the grouping tallied 32 points by placing 11th in a time of 4:04.65. The relay team’s time marked a huge improvement from their performance at the Class M Qualifying meet, where they clocked in at 4:10.29.