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Guccione, Naperville Central capture DVC championship

Caitlin Guccione of Naperville Central knew a lot was riding on her team's race in the 200 free relay at Saturday's DuPage Valley Conference girls swimming meet.

Guccione, who swam the anchor leg, touched just ahead of her Naperville North rival to help give the Redhawks a win over archrival Naperville North and the DuPage Valley Conference championship.

"We were neck and neck with North in the last 50," Guccione said, "and I knew we were about even on points, so we had to win the 200 to win the meet."

Beth Ryan, Kamryn Gallowich and Emma Ilseman joined Guccione on the relay that swam a 1:40.56 and edged Naperville North, which finished in 1:40.72.

"We have good chemistry on our relay team," Ryan said. "We've been together for a long time, so we're comfortable working together. Our entire team is tired, so it was great that we came out today and won this meet."

The Redhawks finished with 279 points to successfully defend their DVC title against the Huskies, who scored 260. Wheaton co-op was third with 169, followed by Lake Park's 113 and the Glenbard North co-op team, which hosted the event at the Naperville North pool, finished fifth with 91 points.

The 200 free relay wasn't the only success of the day for Guccione and Ryan.

Earlier they combined with Gallowich and Sydney Weeks to win the 200 medley relay by more than a second over the Huskies.

In addition, Ryan finished first in the 50 free, while Guccione and Ryan came in 1-2 in the 100 fly.

Weeks and teammate Julia Hagenbaumer gave the Redhawks the top two spots in the 100 breaststroke and freshman Audrey Coffey won the 500 freestyle.

Defending state champion Sydney Dusel and Sophia Heiser dominated the diving competition as they have all year.

On Saturday Dusel, who scored 492.65 points, and Heiser, who scored 451.30, both broke the DVC meet record to help the Redhawks march to the title.

"I can't say enough about the job that David Likar is doing with our diving program," said Naperville Central swimming coach Mike Adams. "All the girls are getting better and better."

While he knows that there's still a lot of work to be done, Adams sees today's success as a positive performance going into the postseason.

"This is always a close meet," Adams said. "Every week we're getting a little better and better. We also had some good swims today from the girls on our JV and freshman levels who were already tapered. This should give our varsity swimmers more confidence as they start to taper for sectionals and state."

Naperville North ended the day on a high note with a victory in the 400 free relay, a team that included Taylor Stoner, Katie Horn, Emily Huff and Connie Zhang.

The Huskies also received winning performances by Zhang in the 200 freestyle, Jilian Eiken in the 200 IM, Stoner in the 100 freestyle and Chuang in the 100 backstroke.

"Our three relays were solid today," said Naperville North coach Andy McWhirter. "They put themselves right on the edge of qualifying. We also had some excellent individual swims. We have some things to do but we're looking forward to having 12 girls tapered for state. The girls who were tapered today did an awesome job. We saw some great time drops."

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