Naperville Central wins Neuqua Valley sectional
Once again, the Naperville Redhawks boys swimming team gave the opposition “the old one-two.”
The Redhawks’ Sean Lehane and Jeff Depew, as they have in numerous invites and dual meets, finished first and second in the 100 backstroke on Saturday to lead the team to the Neuqua Valley sectional championship.
Naperville Central, which qualified all three relays and numerous individual swims, will seek to defend its state championship at next Friday and Saturday’s state meet at New Trier, where the host Trevians will be heavily favored.
The Lehane-Depew one-two punch was just one of the highlights as Naperville Central won six events, including the medley relay.
The Redhawks’ Pat May and Tony Zhang finished first and second in the 50 freestyle.
“Hopefully we can keep this one-two thing going next week and score some big points at state,” Lehane said.
“We’re just hitting our stride,” said Depew . “Today we were concentrating on getting our cuts and looking forward to next week.”
In winning the championship, the Redhawks scored 280.5 points to second-place Naperville North’s 247. Neuqua Valley was third with 204, followed by Marmion with 187, Waubonsie Valley with 142 and Metea Valley with 106.5
The Redhawks won the 200 medley relay, as Depew, Steven van Deventer, Nate Weeks and May combined for the first of three Naperville Central victories in a row.
Lehane followed with a win in the 200 freestyle and then Depew finished first in the 200 IM.
Waubonsie Valley’s Adam Stacklin briefly interrupted the Redhawks’ party by winning the 50 freestyle with the Redhawks’ Zhang finishing second.
After that it was Weeks with a win in the 100 butterfly, and then May and Zhang’s one-two in the 100 freestyle.
The Redhawks’ only trip to the winner’s blocks after that was the Lehane-Depew finish in the 100 backstroke.
Naperville Central was second to Waubonsie Valley (Mike McWhirter, Steven Tan, Tyler Hunt and Adam Stacklin) in the 200 free relay and second to Naperville North (Kevin Butz, Tom Hubbard, Alex Hogenboom and Nick Bessler) in the 400 free relay.
“Our team’s goal is top three at state,” Lehane said. “That would be awesome. It would be great if all three relays could finish top six.”
Naperville North, which was lightly regarded early in the year, came through with a strong meet in finishing second.
Kevin Butz won the 500 freestyle and finished second to Lehane in the 200 freestyle.
“Our kids were great today,” said Naperville North coach Kurt Johnson. “A lot of guys needed to drop a lot of time to make the state cut and they did that. Today, they saw the payoff of their hard work. “
Neuqua Valley’s Kevin Cordes came within a hundredth of a second of breaking the meet record he set last year in the 100 breaststroke.
“I was going for the meet record,” said Cordes, who also qualified for state in the 50 freestyle “Still, this is a good place to be going into next weekend. I’ll be shaved and tapered and good to go.”
Doug Ogilvie of Oswego won the diving competition, while Ted Wagner of Neuqua Valley and Ian Henderson of Naperville North finished second and third with scores that qualify them for state.
At St. Charles North: As he worked to motivate his team heading into the final third of Saturday’s St. Charles North sectional, the first words from Lake Park coach Dan Witteveen were to “finish strong.”
Witteveen went to say he wanted the Lancers to qualify both remaining relays, to get Nate Schingoethe qualified in the 100-yard backstroke and to see what else might happen.
The Lancers got those three entries into next weekend’s state meet, which takes place at New Trier, but they couldn’t have predicted how close they came in those races. Lake Park’s 200 freestyle relay, the first of the relays to swim, finished in 1:28.00, .01 under the state qualifying standard. The Lancers made it, literally, but the length of a fingernail.
“These guys are character kids,” Witteveen said. “To finish a meet like this shows how well they held it together. We missed a lot of very close swims where we had good swims. But they kept it together.”
That finish allowed the Lancers to leave on a good note where two hours earlier, things had not looked so positive.
“I said at the start of the meet, ‘If we make this 200 medley relay, we’re going to rock,’” Witteveen said. “We didn’t, and we started to fall a little.”
The Lancers take their 200 freestyle relay as well as the meet-ending 400 freestyle relay to New Trier on Friday for the state preliminaries. Schingoethe qualified in the 200 individual medley as well as the backstroke. The other Lancers qualifier was Kyle Casper, who won the 50 freestyle.
“(Casper) had that unbelievable 50 which brought us up a little bit,” Witteveen said. “Then we had that third phase and we ended strong.”
Every year, there is a team that seems to have a series of near-misses at a sectional meet, and this year, that title fell to Lake Park. So there was understandable excitement when Casper hit the wall in the 200 freestyle relay and saw his time was just under the state cut.
“It’s good to ‘just make,’” Witteveen said. “They came back and I said ‘guys, you had plenty of room.’”
Schingoethe qualified in those same individual events a year ago and placed ninth in the 100 backstroke. A senior, he has somewhat higher expectations for his final state meet.
“As the taper, I’ll get excited for Friday and Saturday,” Schingoethe said. “I’m looking forward to really going after Friday and Saturday. It’s my senior year and I want to finish it the best I can. Top 6, Top 3 would be great. But I’m just going to try to get my personal best times and wherever the place falls, it falls.”
Schingoethe did not swim in the 200 free relay, but said he got a lift from that performance as he got ready to swim the backstroke.
“That excited me, to know that more people for a relay will get to go down,” Schingoethe said. “It made me more excited for my own shave-and-taper meet next weekend.”
Those qualifiers and the rest of Lake Park’s finishes left the Lancers third behind sectional champion St. Charles North.
St. Francis had a solid meet as a team though the Spartans did not qualify any athletes for the state meet. St. Francis finished fifth. West Chicago finished seventh and also did not qualify swimmers for the state meet.
at Downers Grove North: Danny Thomson won the 200 and 500 freestyle, Willowbrook’s Damon Zito placed second in the 100 and 200 free, and the Wheaton co-op had double individual qualifers in J.T. Simoneau (200 free, 100 free) and Collin Hogan (200 free, 500 free).
Lyons Township won with 252 points, ahead of Hinsdale Central (234) and Wheaton (212).