By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

LAPLACE — When Riverlands and Belle Terre get together for their annual, and literal, down-the-street rivalry swimming meet, it always provides for a fun and lively atmosphere.

But when that meet comes on the opening night of swim season, the anticipation it ratcheted up just that much more.

On Monday night, it was Riverlands coming away with the victory over the Piranhas, 386.5-156.5.

“I think they did phenomenal,” said Riverlands coach Lindsey Vicknair of her Stingrays team. “They’ve been practicing hard and I think they realized after their performance that it was worth it.”

Fresh off of tying LaVacherie for second place in the River Parish Swim League a year ago, hopes are high again for the Stingrays.

“We’ve got most of the team returning, so expectations are high,” said Vicknair. “At the same time, we’ve got a lot of new swimmers and we’re teaching them the correct way to swim their strokes. We’re doing that before worrying about speed.”

Stingrays that swept their three respective individual events were Mia Oncale, Shae Waguespack, Jack Chapman, Grace Richoux and Maddie Guidry.

Anna Guidry, Will Torres, Jordan St. Pierre, Shelbi St. Pierre and Matthew Torres each walked away with a pair of first place finishes.

Trey Romaguera, Caroline Bene, Thomas Chapman, Valerie Perrilloux, Morgan Williams, Alex Noel, Kerry Brown, Shana Breaux, Jacob Palmature and Alex Miller rounded out the event winners for Riverlands.

For Belle Terre, Colby Watkins captured first place in three events to lead the Piranhas.

Linsey St. Pierre took two victories. Cameron Volion, Jesse Webre, Payton Jacob, David Gurley, Blaine Tatje, and Morgan Torres each won an individual event to round things out for Belle Terre.

Riverlands got off to a fast start at the meet and never cooled off, scoring 94.5 points in the freestyle event to take a commanding 62-point lead.

Belle Terre coach Hailey Montz said that she was proud of her young team.

“I was excited to see what they’d do in real competition. I was really pleased with our young swimmers. We’ve got a lot of first year swimmers who didn’t really know how to swim when we started,” Montz said.

“They’ve come a really long way.”

She said that the meet brought out a lot of team spirit in her swimmers.

“They made posters and brought shakers. I brought a spirit stick with a piranha on top and they held it up all night,” Montz said. Everyone did a good job cheering on and supporting their teammates.”