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Full speed ahead for Meadows in victory at Hoffman Estates

There was no rust, nary a post-holiday letdown for the Rolling Meadows boys swim team Friday afternoon.

The Mustangs, on the road after the Mid-Suburban League winter break, defeated host Hoffman Estates 99-67 to improve 3-1 in dual meets this season.

Sure, the main headline-makers were at top form, like senior Jake Barson, who won the 200-meter individual medley (2:21.26) and the 100 breaststroke (1:09.03). Freshman Jake Dellorto did likewise in the 200 freestyle (2:04.65) and 400 freestyle (4:30.72). The pair also helped the Mustangs end the meet with a bang by winning the 400 free relay with teammates David Myers and Filip Pancerz, in 3:52.19.

But Meadows showed its depth with strong efforts from its third swimmers, allowing it to take the top three places in six events, and finish 1-2-3 in two of them.

"That's been the plan all along, to make that third person count, and that's what they," said coach Monika Chiappetta, gesturing to Barson, "say to those third swimmers, they mean as much as the first-place swimmers, and I think that makes a difference when you feel like you're valued and you race harder. To win a dual meet, you have to have a second and a third be fast, too."

That supporting case included freshman Jake Pors, who took third in the 200 IM (2:30.34), while another frosh, Andrew Tavares, took fourth (2:37.97). Tavares later took fourth in the 100 meter butterfly (1:11.13) behind teammates Filip Pancerz, who won in 1:03.31, and Tony Sarussi, third in 1:08.88. Pors took third in the 100 breaststroke (1:21.53), behind teammates Barson and runner-up Kamil Halaj (1:18.49).

"We have never in my 17 years had this deep of a team, where everyone is on the same mission, which is to swim fast and work hard," Chiappetta said. "I've always had fast swimmers, but never this many who want to work as these guys do."

That's not to take away the efforts of team leaders like Barson, who with Pancerz, Sarussi and Kuba Debkowski won the 200 medley relay in 1:56.13.

"We worked really hard over break on his fly and back for the IM, kind of helping him not rely just on his breaststroke, and he killed it today," Chiappetta said. "He always relies, I think, on his breaststroke and free. We're trying to get him under 2 minutes to get to state and the only way that's going to happen is if he drops time in the fly and the back."

In retrospect, Barson was relieved Chiappetta pushed him so hard in practice over the holiday break.

"Considering how much training I did over break, I feel like I did very well, especially in the IM," he said. "I would like to have done better in the breaststroke, but I guess I'm just going to have to wait until next week and see what I can actually do."

Across the pool, first-year Hoffman Estates coach Jenny Toler was pleased with the effort of her team, which fell to 1-4 in dual meets.

"Overall, we had some season-best times, which was really nice to see, especially coming off of winter break," she said. "They trained really hard throughout winter break and then we had a couple of days off of school, so training got a little off track for some of them, so coming back and racing and having season-best times was really fun to watch."

One of those was senior Joe Smiley, who posted his first sub-57-second time in the 100 free, winning the event in 56.68 seconds. He ran in second for the first two laps, then overtook Debkowski in the second two to win by a slim .20 margin.

"(That was) very exciting for him," Toler said. "I think he's finally starting to realize with his 50 background, he's much more of a sprinter, but I've been working a lot more on his back half of his 100, making him do longer stuff in practice. It's nice to see him progress and take what we're working on in practice and apply it."

Smiley, who anchored the Hawks' winning 200 free relay team (1:45.28), was disappointed in the loss, but took the long view.

"We're swimming tired and we're swimming fast, so we're pretty happy right now," he said. "She's beating us down in practice. That's good, because toward the end of the season, when we slow it down, we will have that much more energy to swim when we're fresh. If we're swimming fast when we're tired, we're going to swim fast when we're fresh and be that much faster."

Hoffman Estates also got a terrific performance from its divers, with Sean Hawksworth winning with 211.45 points, and Parker Cannon (185.60) and James Sherell (139.50) taking second and third, respectively.

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