"Heat Two of the 500-yard freestyle, please step up," said the referee.

"Twenty lengths free style. Take your mark ..."

"Beep"

... And so started the second heat of the 500 in the preliminary swims of the Nassau County Boys High School Swimming Championships on Feb. 12. Through 100 yards, the field was still tight, with Farmingdale senior Sal Risi seemingly on pace for another personal best time in Lane 8. Next to him, teammate Keith Maca was recovering nicely from a leaky goggle incident, but then ... the lights went out!

That's right. All of Eisenhower Park and the surrounding area went dark due to a power outage, and when I say it went dark, it went pitch black. I could not see people who were standing 1-ft. in front of me, much less our two swimmers, who might as well have been lost at sea for all the help anyone on deck could have given them. Risi thought he had entered another dimension.

"I thought I had disappeared," he said when he finally made his way back to the team bench. "I couldn't see anything. "I couldn't hear anybody. I was trying to call to Keith, but he wasn't answering, so I got out of the pool. But even then, nobody was talking to me, so I jumped back in the pool to make sure I was still here!"

Meanwhile, Maca was having mortal thoughts. "I thought I died," he said. "I thought I had a heart attack or something." (Yes, it was that dark.)

It should be noted that Maca swam the 100 fly (dropping over three seconds off his best time to go 1:09) about 10 minutes before his 500 heat, so the thought of dying could have very realistically crossed his mind."

Speaking of best times, we had plenty of them up to that point. The Dalers were ON! The medley relay of Dennis Peterson, Dom Boccio, Roy Seter and Jim McCabe placed sixth, qualifying for Friday's finals with a 1:54.9. Then in the 200 Free, Boccio placed 11th with a personal best 2:01. Risi (2:07) and sophomore Chris Rogers (2:14) both swam best times and eighth-grader Joe Reade was lights out (pun intended), dropping eight seconds to go 2:06 and qualify for the consolation finals along with Boccio. Reade would later drop 13 seconds in the first heat of the 500 Free, going from last week's 6:06 to a 5:53. He stood in fifth place when the lights went out. But more on that later ...

The IMers kept the streak going. Peterson dropped seven seconds and finished in eighth place, qualifying for the finals with a 2:20. Seter also turned in a personal best, dropping a full second (2:23) off last week's best at Division's. He placed 11th and will be swimming to win the consolation finals. Sophomore Brian Rossi also swam a personal best 2:41 despite swimming with what one doctor said might be pneumonia. "I wasn't missing counties," said a medicated Rossi!

It was more of the same in the 50, where three Dalers advanced to Friday's consolations. Junior Kyle Blyman did a personal best 24.0 to finish 12th, sophomore Greg Padden shaved half a second off last week's 24.8 to finish in 15th, and McCabe dropped nearly a full second and qualified 18th with a 24.7. Senior Rich Cassar also swam a personal best 25.2 in the 50, but finished just out of the Top 20.

In the 100 Fly, in addition to Maca, senior Greg Camerlengo swam a 1:10.10, just tenths off his best, but narrowly missed the Top 20.

Kyle Blyman finished 17th, in the 100 with a 55 flat, while McCabe, Cassar and sophomore Charlie Psillos all went 56-point and finished out of the top 20.

Now we told you about Reade's 13-second drop in the 500. Also in his heat was Rogers, who dropped 12 seconds to go 6:05 and had an outside chance at qualifying for consolations. But with the lights going out, the plans have changed. There will be a different format for the finals, but Farmingdale HS swim team is off to a great start.