Park boys swimming & diving: Pau, Raymond help Wolfpack sink Cretin-Derham Hall

The Park boys swimming and diving squad is proving it’s not a team to be taken lightly this year.

Park beat Suburban East Conference foe Cretin-Derham Hall 97-80 on Thursday, Dec. 13 at Cottage Grove Middle School, then earned a solid fifth place at the seven-team Woodbury Invitational on Saturday.

In the SEC win over Cretin-Derham Hall, Park earned nine first-place finishes in the 12-event meet, including winning two relays and mathematically won the meet with two events left.

Park’s Michele Pau and Adam Raymond each earned first place in two individual events and paired up to help the Wolfpack’s 200-yard free relay team and the 400-yard relay team to take first place in both relay races. Individually, Raymond, a sophomore, won the 200-yard freestyle in a time of 1 minute, 54.82 seconds and the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 5:05.30. Pau, a senior, won the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 23.25 and the 100-yard free in a time of 50.44 seconds. The two also joined forces, along with senior Matt Henry and sophomore Jarret Mansergh, to finish first in the 200-free relay with a time of 1:36.74 and, again with Henry and Mansergh, won the 400-free relay with a time of 3:34.73.

Other first-place finishes for the Wolfpack came from: Mansergh in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 1:00.37, Nick Germscheid with 162.30 points in the diving competition and Nick Popowitz, with a 1:08.45 in the 100-yard backstroke.

Park finished 1-2-3 in the 200 free (Raymond, Henry and Aaron Lewis, respectively), in the diving competition (Germscheid, Kevin Roettger and Robert Heitmann, respectively) and in the 500 free (Raymond, Henry and Mack Christianson, respectively). Christianson, an eighth grader, broke two Cottage Grove Middle School records – in the 200-yard individual medley (2:24.09) and in the 500-yard freestyle (5:26.85).

At the Woodbury invite, at Woodbury High School, Park scored 186 points to take fifth. Woodbury won its own meet with 355 points. The Wolfpack’s 400-yard free relay team of Mansergh, Raymond, Henry and Pau took second place in the event with a time of 3:32.55 to lead the way on the day.

Park’s next meet will be a good one as it faces a tough competitor in Woodbury on Thursday, Dec. 20, at Woodbury High School. The meet starts at 6 p.m.

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