Girls swimming: Rosary's quest for 3-peat looking good
Midway through the IHSA girls swimming state meet, Rosary is more than halfway toward earning its third straight state title, and St. Charles North is in position to claim one of the other three trophies on offer when the meet continues at 11 a.m. Saturday at New Trier.
On an incredibly competitive night of prelims, Rosary "scored" 167 points and qualified all three relays and 11 individual swims into the finals. Points are only scored Saturday, but swimmers cannot score who haven't qualified, and the Beads qualified more than anyone else from prelims.
"There are definitely some things we can clean up for (Saturday) and do a little bit better with," Rosary coach Bill Schalz said. "I felt we got a little tired at the end of the meet. I thought we got caught a little on the intensity of the meet."
Rosary has five swimmers in competition in two finals races. Of those, Anne Tavierne is the only who will swim in the championship final in both her events, the 200-yard freestyle and the 500 freestyle.
"She swam that 200 the hardest way possible. She went out way too fast and limped into the finish. In the 500, she actually went faster on the second half. She swam the races completely differently but got into finals," Schalz said.
Sydney VanOvermeiren (200 IM, 100 backstroke), Camryn Streid (200 IM, 100 butterfly), Athena Ye (50 freestyle, 100 backstroke) and Kathryn Mueller (100 butterfly, 100 backstroke) join Emily Ryan (50 freestyle) as Beads with finals swims.
"I told the girls at the end of the meet that not every swim is going to go our way. That's just part of the meet. Everybody has to deal with that," Schalz said.
Never before has the turnaround from prelims to finals been so short. The 11 a.m. start time will force elite athletes to recover from prelims and regroup for finals in such a compressed time frame that some are predicting uncharacteristically slow times today.
"You've got to be ready," Schalz said. "If this was an easy meet we'd swim an hour a day, but we don't. This is why you do the training that you do. It's going to be hard for everybody. But yeah, the shortened timeline does not make sense to me and it's a big frustration."
Oswego has 143 points in the unofficial points tally from prelims. St. Charles North sits third with 111 points. The North Stars have all three relays alive and have an additional six individual swims.
"It was a battle," St. Charles North coach Rob Rooney said. "I'd like to have been a bit faster, but everyone here will say that. But I am so impressed with the way we battled."
Three North Stars swimmers have individual finals swims: Audrey Guyett (200 freestyle, 500 freestyle), Mallory Jump (200 IM, 100 butterfly) and Megan Armstrong (200 freestyle, 100 backstroke.)
"We've got girls who want to get faster and that's awesome," Rooney said. "We've given ourselves a chance. Oswego, New Trier, ourselves - we're in the mix and it's going to interesting."
Crystal Lake's Valerie Tarazi will finish her high school career with a pair of swims for the state title. She is seeded first in the 100 breaststroke and second in the 200 IM.
St. Charles East is represented in the finals by its breaststroke swimmers: Mary Jania and Kayla Jones.
"We have a really inexperienced team," St. Charles East coach Julia Oelslager said. "We're looking forward to a lot of things from this young team. Madison Supple swam four events as a freshman and Molly Yedder swam here as a freshman too."
Jones is a senior and Jania is a sophomore and the two have trained together all season.
"Kayla knew what she had to do and she got that time. (Jania) is seeing how much faster everyone is getting and she will learn from that as she gets ready for next fall's high school season," Oelslager said.
Bartlett had a string of tough results and did not advance anyone to finals. Sidney Kelly was 14th in the 500 freestyle, 15th in the 200 freestyle; Kellsie Krisch was 15th in the 100 breaststroke and the 400 freestyle relay was 18th.
"We were pretty rested for sectionals," Bartlett coach Jeremy Meserole said. "We've got a young team and almost everybody who is here is swimming the meet for the first time. I thought they handled it pretty well."
West Chicago-Batavia's Kelly Sego, West Aurora's Gina Jenkins and Jacobs' Jennifer Tokarz all failed to qualify for finals.