BATH – Despite the light dusting of snow that was outside in the parking lot, the temperatures were warm inside the Bath YMCA as both the Brunswick and Morse swim teams took to the pool for their first meet of the season.

With a lot of the swimmers from both teams swimming together in the Long Reach Swim Club, many of the competitors were familiar with each other, which resulted in a lot of smiles, handshakes and cheering for one another between the two squads.

In the end, the Morse girls beat Brunswick, 94-74, while the boys swam to a tie at 82 points apiece.

“I think it gives them a sort of direction to start the season,” Brunswick coach Dave Bright said.

Morse coach Todd Marco agreed.

It was good to get in here and swim in a meet,” Marco said. “Half of our team are new swimmers. We have a lot of freshman girls and they all did well.”

The meet started off with some excitement in the first event. Trailing Brunswick heading into the third leg of the 200-yard medley relay, Morse’s Olivia Harper dove into the pool off her block and gained ground on the leaders, taking the lead and eventually the event, anchored by Emily Martin.

The boys relay team of Evan Willertz, Daniel Whitman, Dominic Marco and Alex Gurney won in similar fashion to sweep the events.

Harper won the 200 freestyle, almost 22 seconds better than second place finisher Laura Chavoustie, who finished 20 seconds ahead of teammate Katherine Hartnett.

The closest race of the night occurred in the boys 200 freestyle when Dominic Marco edged Matt Yost by 24-hundredths of a second.

Haily Harper won the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:17.08. Brunswick’s Alex Morse finished second and Morse’s Fiona Cashman placed third.

“It was good for everyone to experience that first meet and get it over with,” Haily Harper said. “We’re kind of a smaller team this year so we’re still sorting things out. Brunswick is good and definitely has the numbers.”

Dragon Nicco Bartone outswam Willertz in the boys race with Brunswick’s Bradley Vuong finishing third.

The Shipbuilder’s Ella Martin took the 50 freestyle, beating out Brunswick’s Ella Tycz and Mallory Palmer. Alex Gurney won the boys 50 freestyle, with Brunswick’s Cam Ashby coming in second place.

Martin was tops again in the 100 butterfly with Brunswick’s Margaret Chingos placing second and Morse’s Olivia Cunningham third in the event.

Yost won the boys 100 butterfly with a time of 57.78, ahead of Morse’s Daniel Whitman and Angus Brown.

“For our first meet of the year it was nice. It was a little tiring, but it was good to see the other team out here as we know these people pretty well,” Yost said. “It was good to get our team out here swimming together plus it’s real close by.”

Both Morse teams took the next two events – Haily Harper and Gurney (100 freestyle) and Olivia Harper and Dominic Marco (500 freestyle), as well as the 200 freestyle relays,

Chingos and Bartone each won the 100 backstroke races for the Dragons, while Cunningham and Whitman each captured first in the 100 breaststroke events for Morse.

In the final two events of the evening, the Morse girls 400 relay team of – Olivia Harper, Delaney Young, Cunningham and Haily Harper won the their race, while Brunswick’s boys team of Yost, Ashby, Chris Tucker and Bartone placed first.

“I told the kids we had a lot of things go really well and a lot of things we could work on. So we go back to practice with a sense of purpose and some things to work on,” Bright said.

“Everyone swam well, nobody missed their events, everyone hit their blocks, good event,” added the Morse coach.

Morse will next compete on Dec. 18 against Messalonskee at the Alfond Youth Center. Brunswick will hit the pool again on Friday with a meet against Edward Little and Mt. Ararat at Bowdoin College.

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