Win makes tired Waubonsie Valley feel better
Smack dab in the middle of heavy training and the holiday season, and right after a grueling finals week, the Naperville North College Events boys swimming invitational can be an exhaustive experience for the competitors.
But winning can solve many problems and Waubonsie Valley had no complaints after the Warriors topped the five-team field with a number of fast times and plenty of depth.
The Warriors claimed top honors with 149 points, while St. Charles East took second at 121 and Marmion third at 113. Rounding out the team standings were the host Huskies in fourth at 88 and Naperville Central fifth at 82.
Waubonsie Valley capped off its big day by winning the meet's final event, the 800-yard free relay, in 7:20.91. Jared Simpson, Evan Villeneuve, Lucas Conrads and Aayushn Deshpande teamed up to win by more than five seconds.
"That's one of our strengths, I would say, is the freestyle," said Deshpande, a sophomore who was part of three winning events. "We kind of knew going into that last race we'd have a good chance of winning against a good Marmion team and a good St. Charles team. I was pretty proud of everyone because they were pretty sore coming into this meet."
Deshpande also swam on the Warriors' 400 medley relay that took first in 3:38.25 to hold off second-place Naperville North, and he edged Naperville Central sophomore Andrew Dai to win the 200 fly.
"We're right in the middle of training right now so obviously it's hard to come out here after finals week and all of sudden you have these longer events that we're not really used to in the high school season," he said. "So it was just kind of nice come out here and run faster times than we thought we could in the middle of training."
Like Deshpande, Simpson also recorded three victories at the meet, winning the 200 backstroke and swimming on two winning relays. In that backstroke race, Naperville North's Horace Qiao added a second-place showing to go with his second in the 400 IM.
"I've swam this meet before; it's my fourth time," Simpson said, "And we've never come close to winning so this was cool. It just shows how deep we are. It's really cool."
Warriors coach Nick Arens looks at the college events meet as a part of the team's training regimen at this time of year. But that's not to say getting a team title is not an added bonus.
"We come in here with the mentality of racing, being competitive and pushing ourselves in some atypical events, some things these guys haven't swam since they've been in club," he said. "For us it's an opportunity while you're doing all this training to get to see how you're able to perform in those events you don't get to see in high school much."
In the 200 free the Redhawks' Matt King was second, while teammate Dominic May took second to St. Charles East's Matt Nagler in the 50 free. Conrads took first in the 1,000 free and Cole Stefflt was first in the 100 free to help the Warriors claim the team title.