It was a bizarre moment in an otherwise predictable meet.
Westfield’s Leo Mangiamele was reeling in a Scotch Plains-Fanwood swimmer in the last 25 yards of the 200 freestyle relay. Mangiamele and his counterpart drew level a few yards from the wall. A din rose. Mangiamele stretched out his lanky frame and slammed his arm into the wall, then turned to look sideways at his opponent.
The SPF swimmer was gone.
Submerged in the water, he was swimming back the other way, having turned at the wall instead of stopping. He completed a final 50 alone as bemused onlookers watched on.
The confounding mistake seemed fitting given the yawning chasm in skill between the Raiders and the Blue Devils. The Westfield boys crushed SPF, 126–44, and the girls smushed their opponent by a similarly convincing 112–58.
“In the locker room we were getting hyped, listening to some music,” junior Ben Nematadzira said. “So the vibe was amazing, and we came out here and destroyed them.”
The meet also featured a new school record. Junior Clare Logan broke the Westfield girls 200 IM record with a blistering 2:06.82. She spent nearly 10 seconds hanging alone on the wall before senior teammates Clara Yu and Abby Bebel joined her to complete the 1-2-3 sweep.
“We’ve got a lot of new records this year, in the past year,” senior co-captain Abby Bebel said, “so it’s definitely showing that the team is going to be a really good team.”
The Westfield girls placed first in 8 of 11 races and outscored or tied Scotch Plains in every event but one, the 500 free. The boys placed first in 10 of 11 races and tallied more points than the Raiders in every event.
It was a thrashing, one that Westfield expected. The Blue Devils, possessing an unassailable superiority, operated on a higher level than the impotent Raiders.
But, still. This was Westfield. This was Scotch Plains. This was one of New Jersey’s most charged rivalries, a feud that stretches across sports and through years.
“There’s such a deep history between the two schools, not only in swimming,” girls head coach Steve Whittington said. “It’s always nice to be on top.”
Nematadzira was a tad more aggressive. “They’re our rival,” he said. “We gotta destroy them every time. Today we did that.”
The lopsided nature of the meet lowered the drama. But the stands still rumbled during the few close races, holding testimony to the significance of a Westfield-SPF meet. Alumni, home from college, came to support the team, gathering in the gallery during the meet and on the pool deck afterward.
“We won big because these guys were motivated in front of the crowd,” boys head coach Jeff Knight said.
The boys 50 free was, as always, one of the tightest races, with Westfield senior Colin Kavanagh blitzing to first place and Dylan Altman sliding into third. The 100 fly held a close finish between Westfield sophomore Logan Swenson, SPF’s Kyle Karyczak and Nematadzira. Swenson won the race and Nematadzira finished third.
The girls side saw fewer nail-biting races despite the closer final score. The SPF girls, ranked No. 17 in the state (Westfield is ranked No. 2), are better than the SPF boys, which created a slightly more respectable score.
Whittington noted that he used the bitter rivalry meet as an opportunity to test a strong lineup.
“In a meet like this, we start putting in a lineup that’s closer to what we’re going to use at the end of the year,” he said. “It’s really good for my athletes to be able to swim so many events in such a short time and get used to that.” He said that method gave Westfield a leg up against Cherry Hill East last year, whom the girls defeated for the Public A state championship.
The coaches agreed this meet was something of a measuring stick early in the season. The SPF meet is Westfield’s biggest in the first third of the season. The positive result stoked confidence heading into the meat of the schedule.
By Michael Liebermann
Live Tweeting by Alyssa Martinez
