Madison Swim Team Opens Season With Loss Against Rival Chatham

Yanyan Li, Staff Writer|December 6, 2021

Kerry Cozzolino

Both the Madison boys and girls swim teams fell to Chatham in their season opener on December 1st. They were racing at their home pool at the Madison Area YMCA, and it was the first time since February 2020 where the two competing teams were present at the same pool for a meet (last year’s meets were conducted virtually). 

Chatham is considered to be one of the team’s toughest opponents, and both their boys and girls teams have been consistently successful in the past few years.

 “Although we did not have a full roster for the girls’ meet, the girls’ team swam with some personal bests and there were some best times for our boys as well,” Coach Nancy Leib said.

The Chatham girls maintained their lead throughout the entire meet, beating out the Dodgers 105-65. However, there were still Madison swimmers that emerged victorious in certain events. Junior Karen Wu had a pair of victories in the 200 and 100-yard freestyles, swimming times of 2:01.64 and 54.14 respectively, and sophomore Erin Barisonek won the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 1:04.83. The girls also won the 4×100 yard freestyle relay, which was swum by Karen Wu, junior Bella Guarino, Erin Barisonek, and senior Lily Barisonek in a time of 4:00.87. 

On the boys’ side, Chatham defeated the Dodgers by a slightly narrower margin of 99-72. The Madison boys also won in several events. Junior Owen Weller won the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:07.96, and freshman Jacques Chemaly won the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 52.62. Owen Weller, freshman Anuthra Abeysinghe, senior Justin Lee, and senior Artha Abeysinghe won the 200-yard medley relay in a time of 1:45.46. 

Dual meets are scored the following way: Individual events are scored in a 6-4-3-2-1 order (first place gets 6 points, second place gets 4 points, and so on) while relays are scored in an 8-4-2 order. Scores are tallied at the end of the meet.

The Dodgers swim their next meet against Morristown on December 6th at Morristown High School.