The Gilmour boys captured the team title in their home pool Dec. 29 during the All-Catholic Invitational with 494 points, well ahead of St. Ignatius (409) and Lake Catholic (382). The Lancers’ 200-yard freestyle relay quartet of P.J. Koerwitz, Colton Cutwright, Luke Woodhouse and Andrew Varanese e dged the Cougars with a time of 1 minute, 30.13 seconds for a .13 victory. Koerwitz popped the relay with a 21.88 split and Varanese, just coming off a second in 500 free, went 22.74 on the anchor to fend off gold. Gilmour also got individual-event titles from Koerwitz (100 free; 48.72) and Woodhouse (100 breaststroke; 1:02.79). Lake Catholic got a solid individual double from Evan Ream in distance free. Ream went 1:47.45 in 200 free and 4:47.92 in 500 free. Ream has The News-Herald coverage area’s second-fastest times this season in both events to University’s Jake MacPhail. The Cougars also got individual gold from Caleb Ortman (200 IM; 2:07.38), Darren Bittner (50 free; 22.11) and Owen Pesek (100 butterfly, 56.89). Also of note was a runner-up in 100 backstroke from Bittner to crack the top five of coverage area leaders in the event with a 55.71. On the girls side, it was a fairly quiet afternoon from a coverage area standpoint, with Magnificat (415) and St. Joseph Academy (346.5) dominating the team race. Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin’s Brooke Dynes continued her strong start to the winter, capturing 100 breast for the lone local girls individual event title with a 1:04.95, with Gilmour’s Lorelai Kaufman (1:09.96) also going sub-1:10. Lions freshman Gabby White also broke into coverage area leaders with her runner-up in 200 free (2:09.33) and fourth in 500 free (5:52.70). • Also Dec. 29, Beachwood held its annual long-distance invitational. News-Herald coverage area individual-event winners going into 1,650 free were West Geauga’s Clarke Caudill (200 fly; 2:34.00) and Beachwood’s Colin Elwell (200 back; 2:06.40), Sam Kuenzler (400 IM; 4:54.36) and Benjamin Keyerleber (200 breast; 2:23.82). ...read more read less