The Pirates, the boys’ swim team, have won the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) City Championships for the past eight years and the PSAL Opens Championships since 1995. The team, however, had a weaker performance this year since many of the Pirates’ fastest sprinters and their only diver graduated last year. The team compensated by taking on 12 rookies, and finished their regular season undefeated once again, 8-0.
With the team’s 13th win at Opens in as many years, the Pirates wished to continue their winning streak at the City Championships. Like the Penguins months earlier, the Pirates needed to place first and second in the final event to tie the meet against the Brooklyn Tech Engineers and, in this case, become co-city champions. In the 400-yard freestyle, the Pirates’ relay teams came from behind in a dramatic “touch-out” finish to place first and second. Since the standard tiebreaker for PSAL meets— the team with the most first-place finishes wins—was tied as well, this was the first City Championship meet in over 25 years that resulted in a cochampionship