Kiara Bailey-Williams Is Standout Swimmer
Kiara Bailey-Williams had standout performances in both the 200-yard individual medley and the 100 breaststroke, coming second to teammate Jane Brierley in East Hampton’s 93-79 win at Hauppauge on October 21.
The two-minute, 25.42 second, and 1:18.26 finish in the events, respectively, were personal-best times for the Pierson junior, and also qualified her to compete in the Suffolk County meet in both events.
“Hauppauge has some good swimmers, but a number of their swimmers are young and still developing. Our girls overmatched them in all but one of the events,” head coach Craig Brierley said. “We had some flexibility to move some of the girls into different events to challenge their comfort levels and to give others the opportunity to qualify for the county and state meets.”
East Hampton senior Sophia Swanson was just off her best time in the 100 butterfly October 21, just missing the state qualifying time by .47 seconds. She easily secured first place in the event by eight seconds, finishing in 1:00.49. Swanson also placed first in the 200 freestyle in 2:05.21.
Jane Brierley also placed first in the 50 freestyle (26.56); Catalina Badilla in the 100 freestyle (1:00); Caroline Brown in the 500 freestyle (6:10.24); Brierley, Badilla, Darcy McFarland, and Julia Brierley in the 200 medley relay (2:00.74), and both Brierleys, McFarland, and Swanson in the 200 freestyle relay (1:47.67).
After the meet, the captains recognized East Hampton freshman Sophie Tucci as the swimmer of the meet. This is Tucci’s first year with the team. She is also new to the sport of swimming.
“In practice, she has been working hard at learning the skills and techniques needed to perform well in the sport and backstroke has been one of the events Sophie has been working on,” Craig Brierley said. “As mentioned earlier, some of the girls were put into situations to challenge them and their abilities. For Sophie, she was asked to lead off the medley relay and swim the 50 backstroke for the C relay team.”
The coach added, “Since this would be Sophie’s first attempt at racing backstroke in a meet, she took the time in warmups to finetune the execution of a legal backstroke start, turn, and finish. She handled all those skills and the challenges of the race so well that the captains wanted to be sure Sophie was called upon as the swimmer of the meet.”
The Bonackers finished the regular season 4-3 overall and 4-1 in League III behind undefeated Sayville/Bayport.
“The girls continue to put in impressive training sessions,” Brierley said. “This week the team has begun to focus on the end of season championship meets. The volume of their race pace training starts to decrease, but the level/quality will stay consistent as the girls focus on increasing their preparedness to race effectively and reducing the possibility of being in an unnecessarily stressed state at their championship meets. The goal for the swimmers is to peak for their championship competitions both mentally and physically.”
The team competed in the League III championship October 29, but results were not available by press time.