Blazer

LEWISBURG — Owen Blazer dove into the pool at Bucknell University at the beginning of the 100-yard butterfly and realized he already had some catching up to do.

“He was a half-body length ahead of me already — he's so tall,” said Blazer, a senior on the Seneca Valley boys swimming team, of Matthew Jensen of Upper Dublin.

Blazer felt he had it in him.

At the 50-yard mark, Blazer was making up some ground.

“I still felt like I had a lot of juice and my legs felt strong” Blazer said. “He went out really fast and I thought maybe that would slow him down.”

But Blazer ran out of time and pool.

Despite breaking his own school record and coming in with a time of 47.95 seconds, Blazer finished second behind Jensen in the event at the PIAA Class 3A Swimming Championships Wednesday night.

“I told my coaches my goal was to break 48 seconds and I'm really happy with that,” Blazer said. “It just wasn't meant to be.”

Blazer also swam a leg on Seneca Valley's 200-yard medley relay team, which finished fourth with a time of 1 minute, 33.38 seconds. He was joined by Haihan Xu, Daniel Simoes and Kevin Donaldson.

In Wednesday's prelims, the quartet broke the school record with an effort of 1:33.29.

In many ways, Blazer was more pleased with the relay team's performance than his own in the butterfly.

“It speaks to how far our team has come,” Blazer said. “During my freshman year, we had two guys qualify for the state meet. It was me and a junior at the time. Now we have a relay team finish fourth at state.

“I'm glad we did so well,” Blazer added. “It was good to be with those dudes one last time.”

Simoes earned another medal by placing eighth in the 200 individual medley with a time of 1:55.96.

Butler junior David Bocci broke his own school record in the butterfly with a fifth-place time of 49.64.

In the girls' meet, Butler's Laura Goettler and Seneca's Kendall Craig finished fifth and seventh, respectively, in the 200 IM with efforts of 2:02.76 and 2:04.22.

Craig teamed with Ria Dietz, Edie Sawyer and Julia Listwak to break SV's record in the 200 medley relay, finishing the event in 1:45.72 and placing eighth.