St. Viator's Balcerak can breathe easily after big finish

There was a moment in the 100-yard freestyle when time lost all relevance for St. Viator junior Michael Balcerak.

He'd entered the championship heat of Saturday's boys swimming state finals session at New Trier High School as the top seed in the event. But coming out of his final flip turn, a quick glance at the adjacent lane didn't give him the feedback he was looking for.

"I was right there with him, maybe an inch behind," said Balcerak of Stevenson sophomore Topher Stensby. "And I just said to myself, 'Put your nose down, and let's see if we can get this done.' "

Despite lungs that were craving oxygen, Balcerak followed his own instructions to a tee.

He skipped a couple of the breaths he would normally take in the final stages of the race and ended up winning in 45.12 seconds - two one-hundredths of a second faster than Stensby.

The closest finish of the day made Balcerak a state meet champion for the first time, and gave St. Viator its first boys swimming individual event winner since the 1973-74 season, when Ed Fitzsimmons won the 50 free.

"Not breathing, I think it made a difference," Balcerak said.

"It was the difference," said his coach, Sam Wilcher.

The winning time was slightly off Balcerak's lifetime best from Friday's preliminaries, but he left New Trier fully satisfied.

Earlier, Balcerak placed third in the 200 freestyle, repeating almost exactly the time from his prelim effort.

Those two high placements gave St. Viator a 13th-place team finish with 28 points, an impressive feat.

More impressive still to Wilcher was the growth he saw this year in the lanky, fluid Balcerak.

"He's done a great job of staying focused on the destination," said Wilcher, "as opposed to getting too caught up in any of the things that happen along the way. I think he's done a better job of being relaxed but remaining focused."

Balcerak's close friend and club swimming teammate, junior Michael Petro of Hersey, was also a formidable one-man team.

With two aggressive swims, Petro earned his first state medals. He started by moving up a spot from his seed to finish second in the 200 IM (1:50.12) and followed suit with a second-place finish in the 100 fly.

The fly time (48.94) was especially satisfying since it was a lifetime best, but both swims were faster than Petro's qualifying efforts.

"We saw a much more calm, confident swimmer today," said Hersey coach Dick Mortensen. "That showed in how he attacked his races - that was great to see."

Petro's efforts gave Hersey 26 points, good for 15th place. The second-place finishes also mark the best-ever placement for a Hersey boys swimmer.

Significantly, those runner-ups also give him the intra-family bragging rights. Elder sister Amanda also excelled at Hersey; her top finish was third place in the 100 back in 2012.

"He texted her right away, just to make sure she knew," Mortensen said.

Conant senior diver Cole Aykroid produced three solid dives to score state-meet points for the first time. He finished sixth with a score of 460.85.

Impressive enough all by itself, but even more so considering Aykroid's improvement arc.

In his freshman year, he quit the team - twice - before ultimately deciding to stick with it.

"I just had a hard time getting comfortable with the sport," he said, smiling. "To be honest, the whole speedo thing might have had something to do with it."

Those issues are long in the past, as Aykroid holds the Conant records for both 6 and 11 dives and won back-to-back Mid-Suburban League titles in with conference-record totals.

But achieving at the state's highest level required another kind of improvement, and that's where coach Robin Yactor and Aykroid have been concentrating lately.

"We've been working a lot lately on visualization - really practicing the dive, rehearsing in a mentally relaxed state," said Yactor. "And I think that really has helped him."

Aykroid confirmed as much, saying that the visualization ended up working in more than one way.

"I'd get through a couple of dives . . . and then I'd start falling asleep," he said. "I guess that showed I was relaxed, right?"

Barrington senior Colin O'Leary also managed to save his best performances for the final weekend of his high school swimming career.

He came away with fifth-place finishes in both the 100 fly and the 100 back, which came as a bit of a surprise.

"At the start of the year, the goal was to get in the A-final in the backstroke, and to make the B-final in the fly," said O'Leary. "So to make the A-final in both, definitely a little bit more than I really expected.

As a bonus, O'Leary's time in the fly was a lifetime best - and one which got him under the 50-second barrier for the first time, as he finished in 49.81.

Though he had plenty of teammates join him in competing in the state meet, O'Leary's performances were the only ones that scored points - 20 of them, to be exact, for an 18th-place Broncos finish.

Moment's after his final high school race, O'Leary directed the credit for his achievement to his teammates.

"To me, it just feels like everything came full circle," he said. "Anything I've achieved, it's because of them."