On Tuesday evening, the Northampton varsity swim team traveled north to face Stroudsburg High School in their last away meet of the regular 2022-2023 season.

The meet, which included only swimming and no diving events, resulted in two losses for the Northampton swimmers with Stroudsburg besting both the boys and girls teams by scores of 64-30 and 55-39 respectively. Northampton’s head coach Cullen Mentzell seemed unscathed by the rare double loss as he looked forward to a second meeting in the near future.

“We get to swim [Stroudsburg] again next week at home,” Mentzell explained, “so I am hoping that we can flip that result”

A common theme for the Northampton head coach, Mentzell continued to praise the strong individual performances of his swimmers as he highlighted, “an awesome swim in the 200 IM dropping four seconds off her lifetime best,” for senior captain Ava Gower. On the boys team, Mentzell commented that, “Ryan Franke also had a nice win in the 200 IM.”

The 200 medley relay, the opening event for both the girls and boys, seemed to set the tone for the evening. The girls relay team of Andrea Davidson, Gabriella Oswald, Ava Gower and Brenna Caley took second in the opening event by just over two seconds. The boys were up next in Event 2 where Northampton’s 200 medley relay team of Micah Sommons, Aiden Kuntz, Ryan Franke and Andrew Szeplaki also placed second by a six second margin.

The girls 100 butterfly event was one of three nail-biters as Northampton’s Brenna Caley just edged out Stroudsburg’s August DePete-McMahon for a first place Northampton finish by a slim four tenths of a second. Also, as Mentzell highlighted, Ava Gower fought hard against Stroudsburg’s Rene Halas in the 200 individual medley, with Gower just being out-touched by three tenths of a second. In the third girls photo finish of the night, Northampton’s Andrea Davidson took second to Stroudsburg’s Katie Hosko by just two tenths of a second in the 100 backstroke. Oswald had a strong showing in the 100 breaststroke, taking second place with a time of 1:22.33, Ava Aulisio placed second in the 500 freestyle event and Gower placed second in the 100 freestyle event. Following suit from the opening relay event, the 200 freestyle relay team of Sophia Pina, Isabella Kish, Olivia Kuhns and Aulisio and the 400 freestyle relay team of Davidson, Caley, Gower and Oswald both claimed second place finishes.

For the guys, Northampton’s Ryan Franke claimed one of only two first place finishes with a win in the 200 individual medley. Sommons captured Northampton’s second event win for the boys when he placed first in the 100 backstroke, besting Stroudsburg with a time of 1:03.33. Northampton’s Brobst claimed second in the 100 breaststroke, Szeplaki was second to the wall in the 50 freestyle event and Franke also touched second in the 100 butterfly event. Mirroring the results of the opening relay event, the 200 freestyle relay team of Brobst, Szeplaki, Ladd and Sommons claimed second by just over 2 seconds and the 400 freestyle relay team of Brobst, Gabe Gower, Nicholas Isaac and Franke also took the silver in the last relay event.

As Mentzell mentioned, the K-Kids will welcome Stroudsburg to their home pool for the last meet of their regular season next Thursday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. During this meet, the Northampton varsity swim team will also recognize swimmers from Northampton’s KIDS Swim Club, an age group swim club aimed at fostering a love of swimming in the Northampton area.