Presmyk wins MSL diving title

The junior class proved Friday night at Barrington that seniority is sometimes overrated.

In the Mid-Suburban League boys diving championships, three juniors earned the top three spots in a meet that was wide open all the way through.

Leading the way was Barrington’s Nolan Presmyk, and he won it the hard way. Leading the competition after five dives, his hopes took a turn for the worse when the bottom of his feet clipped the board on his 1½ back in the pike position on his seventh dive.

He was steady after that, though, and that was the key.

“There’s really nothing you can do about it when that happens,” said Presmyk. “Once it happens, it’s in the past, you’ve got to forget it. I think I did a decent job of that.”

A steady final three dives allowed Presmyk to finish at 329.5 and overtake Hoffman Estates’ Nick Cannella (319.20). But the runner-up finish was still a great success for a diver who only started in the sport midway through his freshman year.

“It’s really easy to coach Nick because he’s so dedicated and intense about things,” said his coach, Dawn Engels. “What we’ve been trying to work on lately is his mental training, not letting it bother him if something doesn’t go perfectly. I saw him smiling tonight, and that was a good sign.”

Not that everything went perfectly. While Cannella got 7’s and 8’s on an inward, he knows there’s room for improvement on a reverse dive that got only 2’s and 3’s.

“I’m surprised — I didn’t expect to be as high as second, but there’s nobody I’d rather be next to on the podium than Nolan. He’s a great friend.”

Julian Vasquez of Buffalo Grove took third place at 296.70, marking the highest finish anyone at the site could remember by a Bison diver, but he had a slight different take on the night’s events.

“I kind of had a mind-block or something in the early rounds,” Vasquez said. “I just had a hard time getting going, but I just tried to focus and get through it, and toward the end it was much better.”

Prospect senior Andre Burke placed fourth at 286.75, Elk Grove’s Jerry Kurty, who will compete in the swimming portion of today’s league championship meet, placed fifth (282.65) and Rolling Meadows’ Dylan Rust was sixth at 277.70.

The swimming portion of the meet begins at 1 p.m. today at Barrington.