Tri-Cities boys swimming outlook
Marmion
November and December are scene-setting months for boys swim teams. Worth ethics are established, initial steps are taken that will pay dividends when the season ends in February and the bonding process that allows the top teams to stay strong in adversity are formed.
Marmion’s no different from any other team in the state in working to build those things — and the Cadets have gotten to a great start.
“As a group, I am very pleased with where we are training-wise,” Marmion coach Bill Schalz said. “We’ve been doing some different things this year. They’ve really taken to the training.”
The Cadets are somewhat inexperienced. While they had a fair number of qualifiers in the state meet in February, they only scored Ben Kanute. Schalz said his team’s work ethic is very strong so far this year.
“I’ve already got guys talking about getting under the state cut before sectionals so they don’t have to shave for sectionals, which is really encouraging,” Schalz said. “We haven’t always had that talk, so that’s encouraging to me. “
The Cadets celebrated their annual home invitational with victory in the Randy Block Relays. Marmion scored 126 points, well ahead of Lyons Township, which finished second in the six-team meet.
“It’s a fun weekend,” Schalz said. “It’s 10:30 and we’re done, so it’s a nice meet in that regard. You like to see the guys swimming together in the relays and the camaraderie that goes with it.”
The Cadets are taking their semester exams this week and the team will not interrupt that schedule with competition.
“This meet is a nice diversion for them,” Schalz said of the Block Relays. “Then right after that, we go hard into Christmas training. It’s a little hectic at this point,”
Schalz emphasized the broken nature to the opening month of the boys swim season. Once teams return to competition in January, there are no such distractions, culminating in the Feb. 24-25 state finals at Evanston.
“You start at Thanksgiving and then you’ve got Christmas and New Year’s, so you’re dealing with three holidays right in the middle of the season,” Schalz said. “Fortunately our guys know enough to know that they’re here to swim. They’re not going to focus on all that other stuff.”
Marmion’s season kicks into high gear after the break for the holidays. The Cadets have dual meet losses to Sandburg and Fenwick and a victory against Oswego to go with their first-place finish in the Block Relays.
“A lot of it’s just getting back into shape, this early in the year,” Schalz said. “I don’t like swimming Sandburg and Fenwick that early in the year. I’d rather swim them later, when we’re all in better shape. We’re a much better team just two weeks after those meets.”
Schalz said most of his team swims year-round, but some do not. Others compete in different sports before heading to the swimming pool in late November.
“We have a bunch of guys who do cross country and things like that,” Schalz said. “They’re aerobically in-shape but they’re not in swimming shape. It takes a little time to get everybody’s brain moving in the same direction right now.”
Senior Dan Duhig is one of a core of Cadets who will be central to the team’s success. Marmion had 1 swimmer in competition on Saturday last year, and Ben Kanute graduated.
Duhig qualified in the 200 individual medley and the 100-yard backstroke in the 2011 state meet. He was part of two winning teams in the Block Relays.
“Dan’s had a great year,” Schalz said. “He had a great summer heading into the fall. He’s been swimming really well. He’s really focused on swimming right now and he’s swimming much faster than he was at this point last year.”
Junior Josh Kanute qualified a year ago for the state meet in the 400 freestyle relay. He swam in three winning teams in the Block Relays. Schalz said he, junior Jon Thielen and senior Shane Cano have both been swimming well this season.
“Some of our younger swimmers have been swimming very well,” Schalz said. “Guys like Luke Bajda, Mike Burke and Jack Fergus are sophomores and they’ve got a year of swimming in high school under their belts and now they’ve got it, what this is all about.”
St. Charles East
There are a lot of numbers that can be thrown in swimming. The sport is, at its core, based on times.
At St. Charles East the key number is 600,000 — the projected number of yards the Saints want to reach in training before the season’s end. The team is already about one-third of the way to this goal. While a number of techniques, such as weight lifting, have been added to training regimens over the years, the need to jump in the water and swim hard through a tough workout has never left the sport.
“You’ve got to get it under your belt,” Cabel said. “There’s not much time. It’s a short season. We’re kind of in a rush to get it all in.”
Cabel said his team has trained nearly 200,000 yards prior to the Winter break — which is always a time when teams swim twice a day and move that yardage total significantly forward. This is important for all teams, but critical to a decent St. Charles East team as well.
“We need to stay in better shape in the offseason,” Cabel said. “It’s such a short high school season, short and cute. But there’s not a lot of cuteness at the state meet.”
Cabel said the last time the Saints were able to train 600,000 yards in a season was 2005, the last time Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday. The Saints will have rest days on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day but train heavily the rest of the vacation.
“There’s no question that you’ll be in great shape after 600,000 yards,” Cabel said. “You can’t deny anybody that if they put in that work, they’ll be in shape. We’re getting there and we’ll want to get there by the (Feb. 4) conference meet. Right now, they’re in the middle of it and they’re working on it and they’re working to improve with it.”
Cabel said his team still hasn’t shown signs of the training paying off yet. The Saints were fifth in Saturday’s Neuqua Valley Invitational.
“I don’t know that we’re all that tired right now,” Cabel said. “I think we’re getting in shape, but we’re not quite there yet.”
The Saints have a number of faces back from last year’s team, which had Shaun Seuschek as its only scoring athlete in the state meet. Seuschek is a senior this year, and is joined by returning state qualifiers such as junior T.J. Bindseil, junior Nick Watts and sophomore Will Shanel and others such as junior Alec Carnell. “They’re working really hard and concentrating at getting better,” Cabel said.
“They’re smart guys. They know that technique and hard work are the only ways they’re going to contend at state.”
Seuschek had some of St. Charles East’s best finishes at Neuqua Valley, including a fourth-place finish in the 100 butterfly and a fifth-place swim in the 200 individual medley. Shanel was fourth in the 500 freestyle, junior Taylor Nunnery was fifth in the 50 freestyle and diver Kyle Decker was sixth.
“We were fourth there for awhile and we’d like to be fourth,” Cabel said. “I think we needed to be in that fourth slot. We had some errors and we’ll get back in the water and make sure we don’t have them again.”
Cabel said Ethan Sellers and Devin Neises are among the newcomers who could have an impact this year — along with Decker and fellow diver Max Schmitt, who was eighth at Neuqua Valley.
“Kyle’s a freshman who’s really come on and Max is throwing some hard degree of difficulty dives and we’re really happy about that,” Cabel said.
St. Charles North
It’s easy to figure St. Charles North to be primed for a great season — and no one’s denying that the potential is there within the North Stars team unit. But despite having a number of returning athletes and some strong early-season results — including a first-ever victory at the Neuqua Valley Invitational, there is also some caution before raising the bar to incredible heights in December.
“Last year, we were fifth and that was a rebuilding year for the kids,” St. Charles North coach Rob Rooney said. “Even last year, I don’t think they totally believed what they were capable of. This year, obviously, they believe a little more after how we did. But right now, Loyola is a force to reckon with, New Trier is a force to be reckoned with. Sandburg is going to be very good. Naperville North did not have their best swimmer swimming today and Naperville Central’s another team — there’s a lot of very, very good teams in the state. We are just one of the teams that is in position to do well.”
Rooney is not saying his team is average or that his team just hopes to get some athletes on-deck to the state meet. But no one swims their best in December and no one gets a state trophy based on their performances before the calendar turns to a New Year.
There are plenty of promising signs, however.
“This is the probably the team that’s in the best shape of any that I’ve had coming in that I’ve coached at North,” Rooney said.
Most of the North Stars compete in the offseason with the St. Charles Swim Club alongside members of the St. Charles East team — and some other area squads. The base level of training those athletes put together before turning to the high school season was massive, Rooney said.
“They have done an outstanding job this summer and this fall with the St. Charles swim team, keeping in shape,” Rooney said. “They are definitely a lot stronger. In these first weeks, cranking out the amount of yardage that we have, they’re doing well and we’ll see how it works for us.”
A number of things are already starting to show for the North Stars, some in-water attributes and some are on-deck intangibles.
“Our weightlifting is doing awesome and our yardage in practice is doing awesome,” Rooney said. “Our enthusiasm and keeping it loose is a key factor. I’ve been told I need to keep things loose. I’ve been a culprit in keeping things tightly wound in the past. But I’m going to follow the lead of my captain (Chris Dieter) and be a little looser.”
The North Stars showed their potential at the 11th annual Neuqua Valley Invitational, where they became the fourth different team in as many years to claim the title. Neuqua Valley, Naperville North and Naperville Central had won the previous three titles, and each went to have a stellar season. Since 2005, the Neuqua Valley meet winner has finished fourth or better at the state meet.
Seniors Dieter and Joey Chokran teamed with juniors Nick Kowaleski and Kyle Gannon and won the 200 medley relay. All four of those athletes have experience swimming on Saturday at the state meet.
Kowaleski won the 50 freestyle, Dieter won the 100 freestyle, Gannon was second in the 200 freestyle while David Chokran, the junior brother of Joey Chokran, was second in the 100 breaststroke.
“Dieter’s the only one of our guys with four-year state experience,” Rooney said. “David Chokran was not on-deck at the state meet. But he and Joey — I’ll tell you, I believe in the Chokran kids 100 percent, just like I believe in every one of these kids 100 percent.”
West Aurora
There are some things which West Aurora’s boys swimming program has had to deal with annually — and that the Blackhawks again have to face this season. There are 20 boys in the water, only a few of them have year-round experience and some are brand new to the sport as they prepare for competition in the tough DuPage Valley Conference.
The Blackhawks competed in the Neuqua Valley Invitational on Saturday against some of the top Upstate Eight and DVC teams as well as other top schools such as Hinsdale Central.
But there’s also always optimism when Joe Neukirch discusses his team, and that hasn’t changed this year either.
“First of all, we’ve got a good group of kids in terms of dedication to the program, which you like to see,” Neukirch said. “We don’t have as much depth as we’ve had at times in the past. But you are starting to see improvement. Guys are starting to drop some times.”
The training regimen in swimming requires morning and afternoon practices, and the workloads can be grueling. Neukirch said he cannot and does not lessen the workload based on the amount of offseason training his swimmers have put in prior to the high school season.
“For many of the kids who didn’t swim year-round, it’s tough,” Neukirch said. “You can’t really tell where they’re going to be at until after the Christmas breaks. But to see what we’ve seen so far is encouraging enough to feel that we’ll be better.”
Neukirch said senior Christian Cruz is one of the in-water leaders for the Blackhawks this season. Other keys for the Blackhawks include senior Thomas Myles and junior Tamas Rieser.
“They have stepped up and shown some leadership,” Neukirch said. “We’re going to be good in that aspect. We’re not young and yet we’re not old. We’ve got a lot of juniors.”
Neukirch said the lack of offseason training hurts his team. Worse, many of his swimmers were not training hard for anything before they returned to the pool for preseason training.
“It’s really hard when they haven’t touched the wall before our first practice in November,” Neukirch said. “When that happens, the first third of the season’s a struggle. Then you’re working through it in the second third of the season and then, before you know, when you’re finally in-shape, then we’re starting to swim down the season and get ready for sectionals.”
West Aurora struggled against the top competition at Neuqua Valley, but the reason the Blackhawks competed in the meet had nothing to do with an attempt to win the meet.
“For us, it’s just a matter of knocking the times down,” Neukirch said. “We were swimming in the first two heats a lot today. That shows not only how out of shape we are, but also how fast this meet is. There are state times here. These kids are already swimming fast.”