By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
The Cabot Panther boys’ and girls’ swim teams won the Lonoke-Carlisle Invitational Monday at the Lonoke Community Center. The small meet included six girls’ teams and five boys’ teams. The Lady Panthers won by a wide margin over second place Pocahontas with 779 points to the Lady Redskins’ 346. The North Little Rock girls were third with 251. Lonoke finished with 56 points, Carlisle with 29 and the Parkview girls scored 11.
The Cabot boys scored 572 points to better North Little Rock’s 318. Pocahontas finished with 229.5, Parkview 120 and Lonoke 110.5.
Cabot senior Jessie Baldwin and Lonoke junior Kayla McGee were the only two swimmers to win two individual events. McGee won the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:22.33, beating Cabot’s Melanie Abbott by a little more than eight seconds. She also won the 100-yard freestyle as the only swimmer to finish in less than a minute. Her time of 56.85 beat out Cabot junior Maddie Darcey’s second-place time of 1:01.28.
Carlisle’s Tristan Bennett earned 14 points for the Lady Bison with a fifth-place finish in that race.
Baldwin won the 100-yard butterfly, also beating Abbott with a time of 1:03.97, and blew away the field in the 100-yard backstroke. Her time of 1:03.16 was more than 20 seconds faster than second-place Sharidan Mitchell, also of Cabot. In the butterfly, Lady Panthers made up five of the top six spots. Izzy Dulin was third, Kristen Meyer fourth and Hannah Eilts sixth. Only Pocahontas’ Jessica Cooper broke up the top-six sweep with a fifth-place finish.
Cabot senior Caytee Wright won the 200-yard freestyle. Her time of 1:58.95 was the only sub two-minute time. Her teammates, Abigail Breedlove and Darcey were second and third. Carlisle’s Bennett finished fourth for 15 points.
Breedlove and Dulin were first and second in the 500-yard freestyle. Breedlove finished in 5:57.34 and Dulin in 6:23.91.
Cabot swept the top two spots in the girls’ 200-yard medley relay. The team of Baldwin, Abbott, Breedlove and Wright finished in 2:00.62. The Cabot team of Darcey, Shea Copeland, Dulin and Vicky Ray finished in 2:11.09.
The second-place team in the medley relay was the same group that finished first in the freestyle relay, with a slightly different order. Dulin, Copeland, Ray and Darcey turned in a winning time of 2:00.09.
In the girls’ 400-yard freestyle, Baldwin, Abbott, Breedlove and Wright left the rest of the field deep in their wake, winning by more than 43 seconds with a time of 3:59.11.
Cabot’s Payton Jones and Tristen Bowen were the only two boys to win multiple events. Jones won the 100-yard butterfly and the 500-yard freestyle.
Jones and Parkview’s Andrew Curzon were both under a minute in the butterfly, with Jones winning by less than three seconds with a time of 55.96. The endurance race wasn’t as close. Jones finished in 5:16.73, beating teammate Chase Foiles by more than 42 seconds.
Bowen won the 100-yard freestyle and backstroke. The freestyle was one of the most exciting races of the meet. Bowen edged North Little Rock’s Mason Graves by .73 seconds with a time of 54.12, with Wildcats Joseph Potts and Grant Smith also finishing in just over 55 seconds.
Bowen enjoyed a more comfortable margin in the backstroke. His time of 1:02.73 beat teammate Alex Layman by 4.42 seconds.
Cabot’s Jason Bongfeldt and Chris Daniel battled to an exciting finish in the 200-IM. Daniel prevailed by .42 seconds with a time of 2:22.46, but Daniel didn’t leave without a win. He took first place in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:07.46, beating teammate Jordan Woodson by 1.99 seconds. Bongfeldt was third in that race.
The Cabot boys only won one of the relays. Bowen, Daniel, Jones and Garrett Cardenas won the 200-IM relay by seven seconds with a time of 1:50.19.
Cabot has just one regular-season meet left on Feb. 4 at the University of Central Arkansas Aquatics Center in Conway. The district meet will be in Paragould on Feb. 11 and state begins on Feb. 26 in Bentonville.
