Marmion mixes it up in win over St. Francis

As the competitive portion of boys swim seasons wind down, everyone in the water has a variety of tasks yet to accomplish.

For Marmion, Thursday's dual meet with St. Francis marked a final home meet and a chance for swimmers to compete in some events they don't often swim. Most of the Cadets seniors are attending a retreat, which opened some varsity lineup spots.

Marmion still swept every event in the meet and claimed a 100-60 victory.

"We're able to take advantage of a meet like this and swim kids in different events," Marmion coach Bill Schalz said. "It gives them an opportunity to race some different things and keep it fresh. We also had some guys swim some exhibition events and get them some racing in those events. It was more of a training meet for us."

Beyond the victory, the Cadets have had a very competitive January. Invitational meets at Evanston and Sandburg combined with a dual meet with Loyola to allow the squad plenty of opportunities to see some of the state's best.

"We went to Evanston and got beat pretty well," Schalz said. "But everybody got great racing in during that meet. The invites are where our guys like Andrew Kasper and Will Kamps got a lot of great racing in."

Kamps swam exhibition races in the 100-yard butterfly, the 100 backstroke and then swam competitively in the 100 breaststroke and won. He also won the 50 freestyle and swam in two relays. In a way, the regimen was not unlike Marmion's Block Relays, where swimmers get an abundance of swimming in a short period of time.

Joel Bottarini was similarly busy, swimming in some exhibition races, finishing second in the 200 freestyle, placing third in the 500 freestyle and anchoring the Cadets' victorious 400 freestyle relay.

"It was good, though everyone had a lot more events than normal because the seniors are gone right now," Bottarini said. "We definitely swam our off events tonight. Normally, I don't swim backstroke. It's good to get up and race."

No matter how strong the competition is in any month of the regular season, training remains a focus for all teams, and the Cadets haven't backed off their yardage yet.

"It's been a rough month of training, but I think we're right where we should be," Bottarini said. "I feel OK and I think everybody else does too. We're all waiting for taper, and I think we'll be a lot faster then."

That level of opposition returns in three weeks when Marmion, St. Francis and the other Metro Catholic Athletic Conference schools swim for the conference title at Fenwick. The following Saturday, Feb. 21, Marmion swims in the Neuqua Valley sectional, which is a qualifier for the Feb. 27-28 state meet at New Trier.

"We have one more invitational meet, at Lyons, and then we get into conference, sectional and state," Schalz said.

That means Marmion, like all teams, is around 80 percent of its way toward preparation for "championship season," which is when all the hard work leads to tapered training, large time drops and hopefully success in those postseason meets.

"We're definitely going to have our hands full after tonight," Schalz said. "We get another couple of weeks of hard work and fast work, where we try to swim as fast as we can in practice. That's the goal right now, to get ready to get up and race."

St. Francis has two regular season meets remaining. First is a dual meet Tuesday at St. Viator before the Jan. 31 Winter Splash Invitational at West Chicago.

"It's always nice to swim against much faster teams," St. Francis coach Tom Galla said. "In reality, this is the best practice we could have leading up to the championship meets at the end of the season."

The Spartans swam their third meet in a week on Thursday following last Friday's dual meet at Lake Forest Academy and Saturday's competition at Glenbard West.

"Meets like tonight are always important for us because they give us the best possible chance of seeing where we're at and improving for the future," Gallo said.

Gallo said a number of his swimmers swam their fastest times of the season on Thursday.

"It's always really exciting when, as a team, they swim as fast as they did tonight. It was a great meet for us," Gallo said.