Two Vineyarder swimmers made school history at the South Sectional competition, and will swim at the state championships next Saturday afternoon at Boston University.
Junior Gabby Carr became the highest finishing Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School swimmer in South Sectional history, with a sixth-place finish in the 50m freestyle event at the sectionals at MIT of 25.36, a new school record.
She followed that swim with a 17th-place finish in 100 backstroke. Her time of 1:04.56 was also a new school record, beating her old record by over a second.
Freshman Ruairi Mullin joined Carr in the record books, with a successful swimming sectional championship weekend with a team-record, state-qualifying 1:55.02 in 200 freestyle. After qualifying for the sectionals by 0.02 seconds at the Conference Championships (dropping over 4 seconds from his best time), Ruairi dropped over 3 more seconds to break the team record, qualifying for next week’s state championship meet at BU. Ruairi’s 17th-place finish is the highest individual finish ever by a Vineyard boy. Ruairi joins Gabby Carr, who will swim the 200 and 500 freestyles at next weekend’s state championships. Carr qualified for the Division 2 state championships in six events (50 free, 100 free, 200 free, 500 free, 100 fly, and 100 back) but swimmers can compete in only two events at states.
Carr and Ruairi’s recent performances are noteworthy. Between the conference and sectional competitions, Mullin shaved seven seconds off his personal best 200m time, and Carr dropped a second off her school record in the backstroke. Carr and Mullin compete in a sport where improvement is generally measured in fractions of seconds.
