Jay tankers top Tigers (01/14/05)

PORTLAND — They were forced to wait half a month to do it, but the Jay County swim teams got the 2005 portion of their schedule off to a good start.

The Patriot boys team picked up its first win of the season, thumping the Hagerstown Tigers 96-61. The girls team won by an even larger margin, finishing first in all but one event for a 122-58 final.

Five swimmers won a pair of individual events for Jay County, with Joseph Vormohr and Matthew Peterson leading the boys team while Lindsey Vesperry, Julie Sours and Ashley Horn carried the girls.

Vormohr set the tone for the meet in the third race of the evening for the boys. He edged Adam Longbons by 19 hundredths of a second, giving the Patriots (1-5) their first individual win of the night with a time of 2-minutes, 26.80 seconds.

He added victory in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:14.06. Both of his victories came with personal-best times.

Peterson owned the sprints, following Vormohr’s IM win with a victory of his own in the 50-yard freestyle in 25.16. He added a victory in the 100-yard freestyle in 55.47, but didn’t get nearly the cheers garnered by his freshman teammate.

While Peterson won in a personal-best time, Tom McCord also excited the crowd by breaking into the 50-second club as he finished in 59.75. McCord also came away with his first career win in the 100-yard backstroke, finishing eight seconds ahead of Hagerstown’s Garrett Sullivan in 1:12.42.

Horn, a sophomore and first-year swimmer, was a double-winner for the first time in her career. She took care of the distance events, winning the 200-yard freestyle in a personal-best 2:38.34, and hacking 20 seconds off her 500-yard freestyle time for a personal-best of 6:57.47.

Vesperry went essentially unchallenged in the sprints, winning the 50-yard freestyle by three seconds in 27.69. She took the 100-yard freestyle by nearly 10 seconds in 1:02.29.

Sours cruised by five seconds in the 200-yard individual medley in 2:43.73. She was in a much tighter battle in the 100-yard breaststroke, but still held on in 1:22.08.

Adding single wins for the boys were Derick Lee in the 100-yard butterfly in 1:00.91, and Ryan Sutton, who finished first in diving. Brittany Lewis won the girls diving competition with a score of 113.15, and Brittany Laux won the 100-yard backstroke in 1:22.64.[[In-content Ad]]