ITHACA, N.Y. - Purple Valley Aquatics swimmers Isaac Boyd of Pittsfield and Cole Kuster of Williamstown traveled to Ithaca College last weekend to join more than 600 other excited athletes for the Speedo Sectional Championship swim meet.

 

Boyd and Kuster competed in a combined 11 events and two time trial swims from Thursday through Sunday. The meet is set up in a trials/finals format which means that each athlete must swim fast enough in the morning to place top 36 to make it back for the evening swim. For the evening finals session, they swam that event again for final placing.

 

Boyd, 16, competed in the 100-yard breaststroke, 200 breaststroke, 200 backstroke, 200 individual medley and swam time trials of the 200 freestyle as well as the 100 freestyle. Boyd had amazing drops in time in both the 200 free (1 minute, 49.78 seconds) for a 5.92 second time drop and the 100 free (50.79) for a personal best by 2.93 seconds. He made it back for finals in the 100 breaststroke and the 200 backstroke, where he placed in the top 31 of his event.

 

Kuster, 16, also competed in a lengthy list of events over the long weekend which included the 1650 freestyle, 200 freestyle, 400 individual medley, 200 butterfly, 500 freestyle, 1000 freestyle, 100 freestyle and 200 IM. Cole finished third in the 1650 freestyle, sixth in the 200 yard freestyle, and seventh in the 400 yard individual medley. He also swam his way to the top of the podium several times, taking first place in the 1000 freestyle (9:15.33) as well as the 500 freestyle (4:29.01), where there were more than 55 athletes in the prelim session of that event.