Boys swim places first at County Championship

The boys swim team closed a 21-point gap to win the school’s 22nd straight Country Championship. 

Overall, the team edged out McIntosh by a mere seven points to secure the win.  

“It was one of the most stressful county meets,” boys head coach Derek Abrams said. “We were able to pull it off, and we are so excited.” 

The team was head to head with McIntosh throughout the county meet and came down to the last 400-yard freestyle relay. The Panthers were down by one point, needing to place in the top 3 with two relays to finish ahead of McIntosh. 

Senior Seth Roach, freshman Braeden Roach, junior Jimmy Callaghan, and senior Samin Sayani won the final relay with a time 3:20.44, four seconds ahead of the McIntosh relay. 

The B relay, consisting of senior Peter Beardsley, sophomores Jonah Hendreickson and Ishan Kasaju, and freshman Jacob Ramsey took third place and helped score more points to push the team ahead of McIntosh. 

“We all knew the A and B relay both needed to get first, second or third to help solidify the win,” Beardsley said.

The Panthers had swimmers place in the top 5 of each event throughout the entire meet. Most notably:

200 freestyle – Braden and Callaghan 

200 individual medley – Sayani and sophomore Carter Heim

100 butterfly – Seth and Heim

50 freestyle – junior Bruce Allen and senior JD Arnold 

100 freestyle – Braeden, Allen, and Kasaju 

500 freestyle – Callaghan

100 back – Seth and Ramsey

100 breast- Sayani, senior Ian Humphrey, and junior Michael Lin

 The Panthers will send 22 swimmers to the GHSA State Championships at Georgia Tech this Friday and Saturday.