STATE!!!

It's hard to believe the season is over. It was a wild ride, lots of ups and some downs, but another great season for the Spartans. The guys did a great job at the State meet. It's always tough to hold onto a taper for an extra week, but we went in and competed at THE championship meet. Although we didn't go any faster, the guys can hold their heads high about their efforts. But, there was a definite highlight to the weekend. We scored at the State Meet for the 4th straight season! Congratulations to Jonathan Roby on his 11th place finish in Diving. I have to admit this was the 1st State Meet that I watched a lot of diving and it was AWESOME! There are some great divers in Illinois and that includes one of our guys! GREAT JOB JONATHAN!!! CONGRATULATIONS SPARTANS ON AN OUTSTANDING SEASON!!!

WOW!

Where to start? Well, we finished 2nd to our friends from Glenview, but that doesn't even begin to tell the story. When the day ended, the Spartans had 2 Sectional Champions, 6 State qualifiers in 8 events, 3 school records, and 1 pool recorded. Also, one really sore knee! I gotta learn to stay calm. I'll give a blow by blow recap, but you can check out the results and Vlad's Sectional Page for pictures and video.

Diving - You know it's a good day when you break the school 11 dive record in 10 dives! You know it's a great day when you break a pool record held by a 3 time State champ! Jonanthan Roby came up huge with a score of 489.75, easily winning the event. He heads into the State Meet with a great shot at making it to the Finals. While we were all blown away with that performance, Cameron Marsh came through with a score of 317.25, good enough for 7th place and just missing getting a medal. Cam's score was also the 1st time he broke 300 points! This was a great start to the day!

200 Medley Relay - we decided to make a change from the conference meet and to be honest, I wasn't sure how this group would perform. Ye of little faith. Dean Karahalios led off and only dropped a little over a second (28.05), pretty solid drop for a 50, especially in his 1st Sectional Meet! Next came Tim Kessler and a HUGE drop. Despite dealing with injuries all year, we got a solid 29.7 split out of Skippy (had only been 31.1 all season!). Next up was Ted Grasso who got an awesome start! Ted went faster than last year's split in the 1st meet vs. LT, but hadn't really been having great splits until last week when he went a LTB 24.4. I would've been happy with 24.0, Theodore had other thoughts. 23.50!!! ARE YOU KIDDING!!! Fastest split in the meet! Just when you thought we had squeezed all the juice we could, along came Michael Stryzsowski on the end. We got a 21.97 out of Stry, a little different than last week! We ended up in 5th place with a time of 1:43.23.

200 Free - This was the race that I thought would set the tone for the meet. I didn't realize what we would get of diving and the medley. Neverless, this was a solid event for the Spartans. John Montgomery got his 1st state cut with a school record 1:45.26. John swam a solid race, being a little more controlled first 1/2. I was waiting for "I just got excited" split of 49 low, but instead a solid 50.10. A couple lanes over we just missed a second cut by about a second with Brett Heniken's 1:48.25. After finally picking out a suit and a cap (nice color combo!?!?), Brett looked great the 1st 50 and then pressed a little too much on the second 50. His 50.97 split is his best 100 ever! That fast 2nd 50 really cost him on the last 50. Even so, finish 2nd & 4th, with 2 sub 1:50's, I'll take that.

IM - This was probably the event that made me the most nervous. We started out with Sean Sullivan throwing out a LTB 2:12.27, about 1.5 seconds faster that last week, when that was a 4.5 second drop. Not to bad for a freshman on a 2nd shave/taper! Next came one of the best performances I have ever seen. To be honest, Tommy Gilbert had been struggling a little the last couple weeks. He looked tired at conference and very sluggish early in the week. Looks can be deceiving. Tommy hit the 1st 100 almost exactly as planned, and although was about 3 seconds behind the leader, was right on track to go the State cut. After a fast breastroke split (34.71), Tommy was about a second behind the leader, but comfortably within qualifying. With that yours truly decided to take a victory lap and not see the end of the race. Big mistake, HUGE! As I was standing about 1/2 way down the old pool looking up at the clock, I heard the crowd getting louder and LOUDER! 1:58.74!!! SECTIONAL CHAMP!!! SCHOOL RECORD!!! If someone has this race on tape, I'd love to see the last 50! 4 events, 3 school records. Pretty good.

50 Free - Could we continue the roll? YEP! Michael Brennan threw out a LTB 23.60, just out of the top 12, finishing 13th. Not bad considering he has spent more time icing his shoulder and kicking that he did swimming. Another guy on a 2nd shave & taper and another drop. Not a bad way for a Senior to finish his career. Next up was Stry in lane 7. For whatever reason, that lane has been very kind to us at past Sectionals. Although Stry came up a little short, finishing 5th with a time of 22.45, that is still a good lane. That time would've been good enough to qualify last year!

100 Fly - I was concerned about how we would react to Stry just missing the 50 cut and the 15 minute break. Obviously I worry too much! Sean Sullivan came up a big, with another LTB 1:02.00 finishing 16th. That's a tough double in this meet, not a lot of recovery time between the IM and this race. Solid swim by the newbie! Then came what seems to be a family tradition in the Grasso home, a HUGE fly swim at Sectionals their Senior year. A couple of years ago Vlad was trying to convince me that Pat would go 52+ in the fly. I didn't believe him, but a 52.83 should have made me a beliver. The other day, Vlad proclaimed Ted would go 53+ on Saturday. Coach, athlete, ping-ponger, gadget guy, Vlad is a prophet! Ted, good old lane 7, went out in a smoking 24.39 split and was leading at the 50. He faded a bit but held onto 3rd place with a State qualifying time of 53.86. WHOA!

100 Free - After sitting around for about 90 minutes, it was time for Alex Hsieh to join in the fun. Alex went an LTB (I'll quit typing that; they were ALL LTB's!!!) 51.90, finishing 12th. Preadtor struggled a little the 1st 25, then found his way. Maybe he should've shaved the bottom of his feet!?! Next we had John, ready to build on his 200. He was out in 22.7 and leading through the 75, but faded a little the last 10 yards. He still finished 2nd, breaking that 48 second barrier, with a 47.98.

500 Free - The Legend of Stoichku grows! The other day my wife and I were talking (we try to do that at least once a week), and somehow we ended up talking about swimming. We got talking about my best friend who swam for my dad. Back in 1990, he got 2nd at Sate in the 500, went 4:38. Swam the 1st 400 like a man possesed, and then held on for dear life the last 100. I'm sure I didn't talk this strategy with Kristian Trakov, but that was exactly how he swam. He went his best flat 100 & 200 on the way out and was about 20 yards ahead of the field. Stoich paid for the blistering pace the last 100, but still finished 5th with a time of 5:11.19, just a mere 15 second drop. Next up was Tommy, swimming in same lane and next to the same guy as he did in the IM. Evidently Tommy made him mad! Congrats to Hengels on the 4:41, shattered the pool record. I was sure Tommy would be lost with nobody to race, but again proved me wrong. When he threw out a 1:00 split for the 4th 100, I thought he would end up going about 4:54/4:55. Once agin, Tommy had other ideas. With a fast last 100 (58.3), he ended up with a 4:52.62. That would have been good enough to qualify last year, but about .5 off of this year's cut. Another great swim!

200 Free Relay - Another break, but this one was good. It gave Tommy a chance to recover from the 500 and get ready to be a sprinter for the rest of the day. I was confident we could get this relay in, I just didn't think it would be by that much. Stry got it going with a 22.47 lead-off, almost identical to his time earlier. Next up was Ted. I was hoping for a 22.5-22.7 split and got a 21.98! Then came Tommy. Wasn't sure he would still be wiped out from the 500 - he wasn't! He threw down another 21.98. On the end was John. His 21.20 nearly pulled out the win, but put us under the cut easily with a 1:27.63. That was faster than the old pool record, but we finished 2nd. Oh well! That's also under the All American consideration cut!

100 Back - Dean had an excellent race. Dynamo ended up in 9th place with a time of 59.93. It only took me 1/2 the season to figure we should focus on the back with Dean and he had a great day, getting under 1:00! In the last heat we had Brett and his techniclor suit. He got out good (26.83) and tired a bit the last 25, but had enough to go 55.38, just getting under the cut of 55.47 and finishing 4th.

100 Breast - What size was Skip's suit? It may have been small, but it was fast. A 1:07.7, a 4.5 second drop, keep wearing that tiny thing! Tim got out in a 31.69, what he was splitting on the medley relay most of the year! Skip ended up in 10th and Alex ended up in 7th with a 1:06.78. I think swimming the 100 really helped and let Alex get into flow of the meet. Needless to say, the breastroke was a much better event this week than at conference.

400 Free Relay - On Thursday, the guys were trying to figure out what they needed to each go to get under the 3:17.83 cut. With GBS having been 3:11 early in the season, we knew we probably couldn't win it and had to go the time. I told them the last time we entered the Sectional with a 3:24 free relay, we went 3:14.99. This was doable. While we didn't go that time, we came close - 3:15.29! Tommy got us off with a 49.44! Stop the presses, TOMMY GILBERT IS A SPRINTER! Actually he swam it just like a distance guy, but who cares! We had Brett going 2nd, and he gave us a 50.20 split. He was pretty gassed coming out of the back. At State he'll have more time, hopefully we'll see a sub :50 split. Ted was 3rd and continued his outstanding day. He was out a little fast (22.85), but still pulled out a 48.83 split. Not bad for a guy has never been under a 52! That put us right back in the race. John had a monster 1st 50 (21.69!) and actually came a little faster than he did in his 100. He ended up with a 46.79 split and almost pulled out the win. A GREAT WAY TO WRAP-UP THE DAY!

ON TO STATE!!!

Back to Normal

We'll here we are, back in school. That means 5:45 practices in the morning, just when we were getting used to "sleeping in" for 8:00 AM practices. We started out a little slow over break, but picked up the 2nd week. We also snuck in a couple meets over the vacation. The divers competed at the New Trier Winter Dive Classic on December 28th. Jonathan Roby placed 8th in a meet that featured some of the top divers in the state. We all headed over to Vernon Hills for the Cougar College Events meet on January 5th. We finished 3rd as a team behind Stevenson and Libertyville. It was a fun meet, featuring events not normally swum. We started off meet with Jonathan placing 2nd in diving and Cameron Marsh taking 3rd. When the swimming started, we weren't sure what to expect. Most guys were swimming long events for the 1st time in their life! We started off with solid performances in the 1,000 free. Brett Heniken placed 2nd (10:37.69) and Kristian Trakov finished 6th (11:20.75). Other top 6 finishers included the 400 Medley Relay of John Montgomery, Tim Kessler, Ted Grasso, & Michael Chen (4th-4:03.36), John in the 50 Free (3rd-22.85), Ted Grasso in the 200 Fly & 200 Back (4th-2:16.60/4th-2:16.25), Alex Hsieh in the 200 Fly & 200 Breast (6th-2:20.45/6th-2:30.40), the 400 Free Relay of Michael Stryszowski, Brett, Kristian, & John (3rd-3:31.90), and the 800 Free Relay of John, Brett, Michael Chen, and Tommy Gilbert (3rd-7:36.33). Without question, our MVP for the meet was Tommy Gilbert. Not only did he win the 400 IM (4:28.52) and 200 Free (1:52.63), but he set meet records in both events. What's more impressive is he did that tough double with about 12 minutes between his races. Check out the rest of the results.

WAY TO GO SPARTANS!

Finally!

The Spartans finally broke into the win column Thursday night against Maine East. The Varsity won by a score of 94-81, while the JV completed the sweep winning 91-76. We swam some kids in "off" events to take a bit of a break before Winter Break training starts. Even though kids swam in different events, we were real sloppy and had too many dq's and mental lapses. We will definitely be working the next few weeks to shore those issues up. There were some nice surprises and good performances however. Jonothan Roby regained his winning ways on the diving boards with a score 222.65. In the swimming events, there were a few personal bests: Michael Chen (200 free-1:58.63), Bobby Gilbert (IM-2:23.28), John Karalis (IM-2:38.66), Will Asmussen (50 Free-24.42), Kevin Jasiniecki (100 fly-1:07.90), Matt Seanor (100 free-58.48), Dean Karahalios (100 back-1:05.53), Tommy Gilbert (100 Breast-1:05.39), and Michael Stryszowski (100 Breast-1:09.35), too name a few. Check out the rest of the results. Now we head into some tough Winter Break training and then return to school to start the 2nd half of the season.

That was fun!

Sorry I didn't post sooner, I just recovered from a busy weekend. Here are the latest happenings in the pool.

New Trier dual (12/14) - To wrap up the non-conference schedule we decided to travel to Winnetka to take on the defending National Champs. Needless to say it wasn't pretty. We were missing about 8 people on the Varsity level alone, so we were short handed on all levels. We have had a rash of injuries and illness, the likes of which I have never seen. Hopefully, we got this out of our system. Despite getting hammered in the final score, some good performances. Tommy Gilbert finished 2nd in the 200 free & 100 fly (a LTB of 57.9). Here are the results:
Varsity, JV, Freshmen.

GBN Frosh Invite (12/15) - A good day, wish I could've seen it! Bobby Gilbert won the 100 free and was 2nd in the 50 breast and Michael Chen finished 2nd in the 150 free and turned in a nice 23.9 split in the 200 free relay coming out of the 300 free. The newbies finished 4th overall. Check out the results. WAY TO GO FRESHMEN!!!

Midwest Invite (12/15) - While the Freshmen stayed home the Varsity (or at least what was left of them!) traveled to Peoria Richwoods for the Midwest Invite. Turned out to be a pretty long day! We finished 9th, but were without the #1 seed in the 100 free and the #2 seed in the 200 free, as well as taking no divers. Add those in and we are 4th or 5th. The highlight of the day was dinner at Casa de Runkle, which is a sad commentary on how the meet actually went. Nothing wrong with sitting at home eating gondolas and spaghetti from Avanti's. The low light was the 4.5 hour drive home through the blizzard and the the flu. If you want to see the results, click here.

We host Maine East on Thursday at 5:00 PM. Hopefully we can get healthy and back on track!

GBN Wins JV Sprint Classic!

Every time we go to a meet at St. Charles North, I dread getting a phone call from Vlad after the meet, it just never turns out to be good. Thankfully this year there were no calls, but I did get a little nervous when I saw 2 text messages from Vlad. New year, new form of messaging (yeah, I'm new with the texting), and MUCH BETTER results. We sent a patch work crew over to St. Charles and did they ever STEP UP. We were missing our sick and wounded, guys taking ACT's, and even pulled one guy off the bus to fill in at the Varsity meet. Vlad said it was one of the best TEAM performances he has seen, the guys really got up and supported each other. Lots of hardware won, lots of event champions, lots of lifetime bests. Here are the results.

Spartan Sprint Classic

It's amazing what a difference 16 hours can make on a team. After coming up flat on Friday night, the Varsity guys had an inspired performance on Saturday at the Sprint Classic. Despite having to scramble and make line-up changes due to illness and injury and not scoring any points in diving (even though Jonathan Roby won the event with a score of 403.55, we didn't have a 2nd diver), the Spartans came back to finish 3rd, 1.5 points ahead of Conant. St. Charles North won the meet, followed by GBS. Without question, a much better effort than the previous meet, lots of energy and enthusiasm, and I think we all had a lot of fun. A good point to build from. Too many good performances to mention, so click here for results.

GBS Dual Recap

I wish I could say we had a lot of highlights from this meet, but that just didn't happen for the Spartans on Friday night. Our friends from Glenview swept us on all 3 levels and completely outperformed us. We didn't perform badly, we just didn't step up the way we needed to against a good team. There were some solid efforts, lead by Jonathan Roby setting a new GBN Sophomore record for a 6 dive (dual meet) event with a score of 243.75! The other "highlight" was the effort John Montgomery made on the last leg of the 400 free relay. Interestingly, GBS decided to split their relays and despite being about 12-15 yards behind, John almost pulled all the way back to their B relay, falling about .5 seconds behind. In the long run it didn't matter, as the Titan relay was dq'ed for a take-off, but a great effort just the same. Click for results.

LT Meet Recap

We kicked off the season with a dual against Lyons and the "other" Coach Walker on Friday night. LT is a solid team, with some great guys who can swim fast, especially the guy in the pink suit. If you're gonna wear something like hat, you'd better be good! The Spartans came up on the short end of this clash, but had several good performances for the 1st meet. On the Varsity level, John Montgomery turned in some solid times (1:49.8 in the 200, 49.67 in the 100 - good enough for 1st place), as did Tommy Gilbert (2:05.8/5:02 in IM/500), Brett Heniken (58.9 in Back, just got touched out), and our relays swam well for the first meet. Michael Stryzsowski and Ted Grasso turned in splits that were lifetime bests or pretty close! Jonathan Roby started off the season with a solid 195 point effort, just .60 points behind the winner from LT. I really liked what we saw on the JV level, several event wins and lifetime bests! Leading the way were Will Asmussen, Stephen Ioannou, Tytus Kwiatkowski, Michael Lee, Michael O'Brien, and Ethan Steinberg all turned in solid performances. Check out all the results.

This week features our annual dual with GBS on Friday (5:00 PM @ GBN) and then we will split up on Saturday. We will host the Spartan Sprint Classic on Saturday (9:00 AM diving/1:00 PM swimming), while some of the guys will head to St. Charles North for the JV Sprint Invite at 1:00 PM. GO SPARTANS!

STATE!!!

The girls wrapped up their season last night at the State Meet prelims at New Trier. Carrie Dinelli made her State debut finishing in 34th place in Diving. Gabrille Bunney finished 25th in the 200 free with a time of 1:57.16. Gabrielle was out strong, but tapering 2 weeks in a row is tough and faded a bit at the end, just off her time from Sectionals. Donna Szostak went 5:13.54 in the 500 free, finishing in 17th place. Donna was in a heat with some big guns and went out hard, was with the leaders for the first 300, but paid for the fast opening pace at the end. Even though we're disappointed not to be swimming Saturday, the girls did a great job this season and we are all proud of our Spartan Swimmers & Divers!

Sectional Recap

It's hard to say a meet with 16 lifetime bests of a possible 18 would be a disappointment, but the the Spartans left the Vernon Hills pool feeling a little empty. The good news is we have 3 state qualifiers Gabrielle Bunney (200 Free), Donna Szostak (500 Free), and Carrie Dinelli (Diving). The bad news is we missed qualifying 7 more spots by a total of 2.5 seconds combined! We were on the cusp on every occasion and just came up a little short. Overall, a great effort by a young team. We'll finish up strong at State next week and use this to build for next year. GOOD LUCK AT STATE SPARTANS!

Finishing Strong

This past week was a busy one with 3 meets in 3 days, didn't know what to eat today because I couldn't find a coach's hospitality room in my house. Here are some recaps from the past week:

Evanston JV Invite - this is a great chance for the girls who don't make the conference line-ups to have a championship style meet at a good pool. It's a great atmosphere with good competition (Evanston, New Trier, & Maine South), and a fun time. They actually give out awards to heat winners as well as the top 6 finishers. It was definitely a good night, with several girls finishing in the top 6 and getting in on the awards ceremony. Analise VanSpankeren and Jackie Herman led the way with some great swims. Another highlight was seeing our A & B 400 Free relays finish in the top 6.

JV Conference - no better way to spend a Friday night in northeast Park Ridge than absolutely dominating the conference meet! It started off with a huge bang with a new CSL North record in the 200 Medley Relay (Maria Vlahova, Margot Tuchler, Bri Reid, Sami Hogan). They broke the record by about 2 seconds, great 26.8 free split by Sami sealed the deal. Bri came back later and broke the 100 fly record by over a second as well! Other champions were Becca Flam (200 free), Cyn Hsu (200 IM), Sami (50 Free), Malia Silvert (100 free), Margot Tuchler (100 breast) and both free relays (200 FR - Sami, Becca, Bri, Malia & 400 FR - Becca, Sami, Malia, Maria). AN ABSOLUTELY GREAT NIGHT!

Varsity Conference - when we absolutely, positively had to have it, we did! The Spartans captured the meet which earned a conference co-championship. Lots of excellent performances including conference championships by Donna Szostak (200 & 500 Free), Gabrielle Bunney (100 Free), Kate Dvornitsyn (100 Back), Carrie Dinelli (Diving) and a sweep of all 3 relays. Some good tapered swims and solid mid-taper times highlighted the meet. A great way for some to end their season and a good building block for the rest for next week.

WAY TO GO SPARTANS!!!!

Championship Season

THE BEST TIME OF THE SEASON!!! The girls run started off with the Freshmen finishing 6th at the New Trier Invite. The Spartans were led by Emily Heniken, who won the 150 Free (1:28.96) and finished 2nd in the 300 Free. Other top 6 finishers were Beth Orbon (5th in 150 Free) and Margot Tuchler (6th in 50 Breast), as well as the 200 Medley Relay (3rd Place) of Beth, Margot, Emily, and Jen Montgomery and the same 4 in the 400 Free Relay (3rd). Way to go ladies!!! The good times continue this week as the girls travel to Evanston on Thursday for the JV Invite and then onto Maine East for the Conference championships. The JV is on Friday, starting at 6:00 PM (diving at 3:30), while the Varsity hits the water at 1:00 PM on Saturday (diving in AM). GOOD LUCK SPARTANS!!!

Too Close to Call

The girls came up a little short tonight in their dual meet with Deerfield. It was back and forth all night until the Spartans winning 200 free relay was dq'd, resulting in a 10 point swing for the Warriors. The girls fought back valiantly with several key performances in the final 3 events, including a 1-2 finish in the 400 free relay, to make the final score DHS-95 GBN-91. Speaking of key performances, the JV won convincingly 113-73, highlighted by some awesome swims. There's a lot of work left to be done, keep it up Spartans!