Barrington's seniors step it up

It was senior night Friday for the Barrington boys swim team, and how coincidental that it was the seniors that provided the depth that led the Broncos to a 125-61 victory over Palatine.

Sure, underclassmen like Colin Cross and Colin O'Leary had big nights, each winning two events and helping Barrington win two of three relays.

But it was hard to ignore the work put in by Broncos seniors like Matt Gouskos, who won the 50 freestyle in 23.36 and was the anchor on Barrington's 200 medley relay B team that took second in 1:44.50.

Then there was Chase Lesniak, who joined Gouskos and Andy Zhou and Jeremy Kleinjan on that 200 medley relay, and also took second in the 100 breaststroke (1:04.59). Gouskos and Lesniak also paired with John Lagoni and Matt Gersten to place second in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:33.62, just behind teammates Cross, Brandon Schaff, Andrew Fish and Mitchell Gavars, who won in 1:32.88.

Senior Pat Hogan took third in the 200 freestyle in 1:52.07 and the 100 freestyle in 51.08, and teamed with Gersten, Schaff and Kleinjan to take second in the meet-ending 400 freestyle relay in 3:26.18. They finished behind Palatine's foursome of Jordan Kalina, Ryan Schlaiss, Jacob Klein and Alex Bartosik, who won the Pirates' only event in 3:25.49.

Senior divers Jordan Meyer (195.30) and Christiaan Potgeiter (190.05) finished third and fourth in their competition, edged by their winning teammate Tommy Suppes (209.45).

After four years of long practices, tough meets and thousands of yards of swimming, their last high school dual meet was more sweet than bitter. And why not? The Broncos took first in 11 of 12 events and went 1-2 in five events. They also took three of the top four spots in six events to finish the dual meet portion of the schedule at 4-1 in the Mid-Suburban League West Division and 7-1 overall.

"It really makes our night to win and win by a lot," Lesniak said. "I know all the other seniors want to end with a good race or a good dive, whatever comes next. They just want to end on a good note. For some people, it may be their last dive or their last race they'll ever swim in high school. So it really means a lot to them."

What's Gouskos going to remember from four years of dual meets?

"I think, honestly what I'm going to remember is what great guys we had on the team," he said. "We love each other and we support each other, we all want each other to do better, even when we're competing with each other in the same events, we're hoping that the other guy beats us even though we want to win. We want to see them do well and get their best times."

Jumping out to a big lead was important for Barrington on Friday, said coach John Valentine, who saw his team take an 86-40 advantage ahead of the 200 freestyle relay. The Broncos clinched the meet by finishing 1-2 in that event.

"We knew that going in, that we had to take off fast on the medley relay - going 1-2 was a confidence boost for us," he said. "Winning every event up until the 400 relay really set the tone for the meet. We wanted to take the momentum away from (Palatine) early, and fortunately we were successful."

Across the pool, the loss wasn't exactly pleasant for Palatine coach John Schauble, but he is cognizant of where his team is, and where he wants it to be.

"The guys were telling me they were feeling really great last night, so I'm thinking, 'Great, we're tapering,'" he said. "That's the last thing I want to see. So us swimming the way we swam tonight, not swimming great, is kind of a good sign. We want to be there in a couple of weeks. We want to peak at sectionals, not at a dual meet."

Palatine was paced by Klein, a freshman, who took second in the 200 freestyle in 1:49.54, and third in the 500 freestyle with a personal-best time of 4:59.88 - the first time he has gone under 5 minutes in yards in the event. He also teamed with Jacob Baran, Max Myszka and Bartosik to take third in the 200 freestyle relay (1:36.66).

"It was a tough meet, but to see that we could all come together at the end and pound out another event was good," Klein said of the winning 400 freestyle relay team.

The Pirates, who finished 3-2 in MSL West duals and 5-2 overall, got a good effort from Bartosik, who took second in the 200 individual medley (2:04.73) and 100 freestyle (50.96). Marcus Carter-Buckman did the same in the 50 freestyle (23.44) and 100 backstroke (56.92), and Dylan Wilken took second in diving with 199.60 points.