Rosary swimmers dominate their own meet

This year marked the 10th time Rosary has hosted a girls swim meet, and the Beads responded with their eighth victory, a resounding 410-228.5 win over second-place Neuqua Valley.

The field was made tougher this year with the addition of Lyons Township, Peoria Notre Dame and Bartlett-Streamwood. What was once a small, but highly-talented meet is now a full-sized, but even more talented invitational.

"We were looking to raise the quality of the meet, so everyone gets great racing opportunities," Rosary coach Bill Schalz said.

While Rosary is one of the strongest teams in the state this year, Schalz said the school's invitational is special to his swimmers, who won eight of the 11 events.

"Typically, when a team hosts its own invite and you're at home and the parents are working, it's kind of this 'familial-team' thing, the kids get more excited," Schalz said. "We see Sandburg every year at their invite and they look like they're tapered. Of course, they're not, but they get excited for their invite and want to win. I think, for us, it's the same thing."

The Beads opened the meet in stunning fashion when the 200-yard medley relay team of Athena Ye, Sydney VanOvermeiren, Kathryn Mueller and Emily Ryan swam 1:47.45 to remove Rosary's 2006 quartet of Kara Savegnago, Brittany Doss, Mackenzie Powers and Amy Schaefer from the record book. With a slightly revised lineup, the 2006 relay won the state title.

"All of our seed times were in-season times," Schalz said. "Yet we still had kids get one- or two-second drops. It's exciting."

Alexis Yager won the 200 IM and the 100 breaststroke and Ye won the 50 freestyle and broke the meet record in the 100 backstroke. Mueller led a 1-2-3 sweep in the 100 butterfly ahead of teammates Katie Rentz and Camryn Streid and the Beads won both freestyle relays, with the 200 free relay of Ryan, Linda Licari, Yager and Katie Rentz tying the meet record.

Rosary finished second in the state last year and returns the bulk of its roster. Even with those returnees, the Beads have more competition as the freshman class is incredibly talented. Ye and Mueller, for example, are freshmen.

"We have so much competition," Schalz said. "We have all-state swimmers who are in going to have to fight tooth-and-nail to get their spots on our state team. It's not a matter of cruising through the season. I guess it's a good problem to have, because the competition means we're swimming really, really well."

Despite all this competition, Schalz said the atmosphere within the team unit is as strong as it's ever been.

"They are, top to bottom, the nicest group of girls," Schalz said. "They're easy to work with and it's a fun group to coach. We've had that in a number of my years at Rosary, but it's a good group of girls. I see upperclassmen who are clearly getting beat by freshmen, and then I see photos from our team photographer, and I see that they're hugging each other after races."

As one of the newcomers to the meet, the Bartlett-Streamwood co-op found itself against some of the strongest competition in the area. But the Sabrehawks finished seventh, and were within 10 points of fifth-place Peoria Notre Dame.

"The last couple of years, we've been at invites where we either won every event or were competing for first or second," Bartlett-Streamwood coach Jeremy Meserole said. "One of the reasons we wanted to come here was to see some of the better teams and swimmers in the state more frequently through the season."

Bartlett-Streamwood has one of the elite swimmers in junior Kalya Filipek, who broke the meet record in the 100 freestyle. Filipek's 52.54 time moved Rachel Burke's 53.20 from 2010 off the record sheet. Filipek was also third in the 200 freestyle.

"We know we have one of the best 100 freestylers in the state, and I think the girls rally around that," Meserole said. "(Filipek's) racing better than she had at this point in either of the past two seasons. We have gotten a little more regimented in the weight room, so she's tired in a different way than she's used to. I think she feels a little 'clunky,' but she's still got it and she'll learn how to use it."

Bartlett-Streamwood is not a one-person team, however. Filipek got the Sabrehawks off to a large first leg lead in the 400 freestyle relay, and Paige Edmer kept the quartet in the lead through the second leg. Sarah Hanning and Brianna Cichon swam the final legs, and the relay finished fourth.

"I like our 400 free relay," Meserole said. "We maybe left a little on the table today, but I think the girls responded well at the end of the meet."