TITLE TIME FOR MOUNTS

Ephrata’s Chad Jones admits that his mind was on little other than Thursday’s big Lancaster-Lebanon League Section Two swim meet at Elizabethtown.

Both the boys and girls competitions had championship implications. With wins, the Mountaineers would wrap up the section titles. Wins by the Bears would clinch at least a tie for the crown.

“All week long, that’s all I’ve been thinking about,” he said. “Monday night in the living room I told my mom, ‘E-town Thursday, E-town Thursday.’ It’s all I’ve been thinking about and it paid off.”

Jones even got to finish things out, anchoring the 400-yard freestyle relay that capped Ephrata’s 95-75 victory in the boys meet.

The Mounts also won the girls side by the same 95-75 score, clinching both Section Two regular season titles for Ephrata.

With championships on the line, both meets were everything they were billed to be.

“On the bus here, everybody was kind of calm, soaking it all in, thinking about what was going to happen,” Jones said. “Tonight was just awesome. The build up coming into it and then everybody was electric tonight. It was crazy.”

After trailing early, the Bears tied the boys meet, 31- 31, at the intermission and took the lead after finishing second, third and fourth in the 100 butterfly.

However, the Mountaineers responded in the next race — the 100 freestyle.

Sophomore Ethan Lloyd won the 100 in 50.13 and teammate Coy Schwanger scored second, helping Ephrata get the lead back.

“I studied E-town and I knew that Coy would have to have a big race,” Mounts coach Mickey Molchany said. “We talked that this 100 free is huge for us. He just took off and held on. That was exactly what we needed him to do.”

Freshman Joey Myer picked up his first individual win of the night in the next race, the 500 free in 5:15.96 and Ephrata scored third and fourth to open a 59-51 lead.

Jones won the 100 backstroke and suddenly the Mounts led 76-64, which set the stage for Myer in the 100 breaststroke (1:05.91).

Still, it was mathematically possible for the Bears to pull out the meet by finishing first and second in the 400 free relay, but Lloyd, Schwanger, Thatcher Eby and Jones went 3:35.40 to clinch the meet and league crown.

Jones, Myer and Lloyd all won two events for the Mounts while freshman Everett Rachel scored Elizabethtown’s race win with his 23.20 in the 50 free.

Although the score was the same, the girls meet didn’t quite have the suspense as three freshmen and a sophomore won two individual events and were on two victorious relays.

Ava Knopsnyder (200 individual medley, 100 breaststroke), Bria Burkholder (100 butterfly, 100 backstroke) and Megan Martin (200 and 500 free) were the rookies who excelled. Sophomore Kauri Parsons won the 50 and 100 free races.

“I knew we had the top-end speed. But I knew our depth would have to come through and boy did they come through,” Molchany said.

Elizabethtown coach Chad Houck was far from disappointed after the meet.

“You wish every meet was like this,” he said. “It’s probably not good for my blood pressure, but coming in both sides knew this was going to be a close meet. We’ve known that since last year.

“There was not a whole lot we could do. They were just a little bit quicker on a couple levels. I took a couple of risks, but they wouldn’t have changed anything. We had a DQ in the last (boys) relay that made the score look a little worse.”