Palatine's Dorszewski poised for big finish

Monica Dorszewski is the kind of swimmer any coach would love to have.

A senior at Palatine, she is poised to make a memorable exit to her high school career in today's state preliminaries at Evanston High School. If things go well for her, she'll be scoring points for Palatine in Saturday's 1 p.m. finals, in either the 100-yard breaststroke, the 200 freestyle, perhaps even the medley relay.

Such a finish would conclude a remarkable performance arc for an athlete who entered her high school years as an already accomplished swimmer and still has managed to get a little more out of her ability with each passing year.

And then there's that other dimension to Dorszewski, one that doesn't have much to do with swimming ability at all.

“She is really remarkable,” said Palatine coach Brittany Berleman. “She's the hardest-working swimmer I've had, and the other kids see that and it has such an important effect on everyone.

“But beyond that, she just genuinely cares about everybody on this team. That makes such a difference.”

It helps, too, when that caring translates into action.

Over the summer, when it became clear that the Palatine boys and girls swimming program was in dire need of money, Dorszewski personally organized the fund-raiser that helped solve the problem.

That caring is evident in other ways, such as:

Ÿ Seeing her consoling a younger teammate after a subpar race in a dual meet at Schaumburg early this season, and congratulating that same swimmer later in the meet after a better effort.

Ÿ An expression of pure joy, complete with whoops of delight, in the water after her winning effort in the 100 breaststroke at the Stevenson sectional.

Ÿ A disappointed slap of the water shortly after the breaststroke, when Palatine's 400 freestyle relay, despite a ferocious finishing leg by Dorszewski, narrowly missed qualifying for the state meet.

Her high school coach through her first three seasons, Ed Richardson, has been keeping tabs on the Palatine swimmers he helped develop. He thoroughly enjoyed the results at Stevenson, where the Pirates produced a third-place team finish and sent a nice complement of competitors to the state meet, including a relay, junior Nicole Huffman and diver Mallory Fisher.

“Her work ethic is just extraordinary,” Richardson said of Dorszewski. “From a coaching standpoint, it's less common than you might think when your best swimmer is also your hardest worker. And then, if that same person has the kind of personal skills that Monica has, it really makes it special because you can get so much more accomplished.

“I think she's the kind of person who will be successful at whatever she tries in life.”