Freedom’s boys swim team turned a 13-point lead halfway through their meet against Pocono Mountain West into a 35-point victory over the Panthers, 103-68, on Jan. 13 at Freedom.

Asa Lawser, Ben Rader, Antonios Tatakis, and Griffin Kleinle won the first relay of the day, the 200 medley, with a time of 1:51.19.

Kleinle then won the 200 free in 1:57.79, and Tatakis won the 50 free in 23.78.

Cody Smith won the diving event with a score of 331.60.

Smith’s final dive was a reverse 1 ½ 1 ½ that the Patriot senior competed for just the second time with scores of 8, 7, 7.5.

“It’s really unique and different from any other dive I do, so it’s a little bit harder than the twisters I was doing before,” Smith said. “I felt very good about that one. I’ve trained it since November, but it’s really just started to click on how to do that takeoff, and that has helped a lot.”

Smith’s highest scores were 8.5, 9, 8 on his inward dive, and his reverse 2 ½ scored 7.5s with a 3.0 degree of difficulty.

As always, the height Smith is able to achieve off the board is exceptional.

“It’s definitely very important,” he said. “It allows for a lot of that higher [degree of difficulty] stuff, and height is part of the judging criteria.”

Tatakis took first place in the 100 butterfly in 59.01, Aiden Schankel won the 100 free in 55.07, and Kleinle was first in the 500 free in 5:18.78.

Tatakis anchored the 200 free relay comeback win by .10 with Cristian Urena, Schankel, and Joseph Volkert in 1:43.16.

Rader won the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:09.56 that thrilled Patriot teammates as much as Rader himself.

“The thing about breaststroke is, every single time you pop your head out of the water, you can hear them yell for you, which is something you don’t get with the other strokes, and it’s a little bit extra boost, so it’s nice to have that from your teammates,” Rader said. “I was ecstatic. I’ve been working on breaking that 1:10 barrier since I started last year with this event, and it gets me that much closer to being in districts, which I’m very excited for. I was stuck at 1:11-1:12 all the way up until Christmas break, and then at Christmas break, I trained a lot, and I really put in a lot of yards and focused on specific aspects of my turns. Last week, I went to 1:10 for the first time. This week, I dropped over a full second, and I think it’s because of all that work over Christmas break.”

Kleinle, Rader, Schankel, and Urena ended the meet with a 400 free relay victory in 3:54.66.