By RYAN ARENA
L’Observateur

A year after Hill Heights wrested River Parish Swim League runner up honors from Riverlands, which finished in the second spot in 2007, everyone knew the rubber match between the two clubs had the potential to be one to remember.

It lived up to the hype.

A back and forth night of action came down to the final relay events as the Stingrays remained undefeated by besting Hill Heights by only 16 points, 275.5-259.5.

Riverlands held off Hill Heights (3-2) in the final event, the freestyle relay, by winning six of its 10 races.

“I was definitely nervous,” said Riverlands coach Carla Lambert. “But the kids knew what they had to do. And everyone stepped up…I mean everyone. Nobody held back a thing.”

It set up a league championship meet that was scheduled to take place Tuesday night between the league’s last two undefeated squads, Riverlands (5-0) and defending champion LARAYO (5-0). The meet was rescheduled from Monday due to rain. Details and scores will be in the Saturday edition, as scores were not available before presstime.

Lauren St. Martin led the way for the Stingrays, taking three individual first place finishes.

Riverlands took a 61-47 lead after the freestyle event, and held that 14 point advantage through the breaststroke.

But Hill Heights turned the tables in the butterfly event, outscoring the Stingrays 54-35 to take a 203.5-198.5 lead.

That left everything up to relays. Riverlands regained the lead in the medley relay, edging the Hurricanes by one race and taking a 35-28 advantage in the event. From there, they’d only extend the lead.

Lambert said that her team just wasn’t willing to suffer its first defeat of the season.

“They wanted it as bad as I did for sure,” Lambert said.

Merryn Guidry, Kyle Wilking, Maddie Guidry, Andre St. Martin, Albert Hane, Cameron Torres, and Thomas Chapman each took two first place finishes for Riverlands.

Grace Richoux, Shelbi St. Pierre, Lane Gendron, and Brian Comiskey rounded out the first place winners for the Stingrays.

Hill Heights first place finishers included Seth Smith, Morgan Rigby, Justin Rigby, Katie Waguespack, Shelby Waguespack, Brian Pfister, Dylan Zeringue, Stephen Wells, and Morgan Schmidt.