Hamann, Cary-Grove FVC champs
Over the past three years, Michael Hamann has been one of the most dominating swimmers in the Fox Valley Conference.
Saturday afternoon in the 2012 FVC Meet at Woodstock North, Hamann continued his winning ways with two individual wins along with a 400 freestyle relay win to lead Cary-Grove to the conference crown.
The Trojans finished with 316 points while Jacobs (271) finished second. Woodstock (178), Huntley (171) and McHenry (130) completed the team scoring.
Hamann won the 200 IM with a conference record time of 1:55.13, breaking the old record by over seven seconds, before adding another conference invite record in the 100 backstroke with a time of 53.22 to break his own record from a year ago.
Hamann said that it was a wonderful day for both himself and the team after Cary-Grove did something the Trojans had never done before with Hamann on the team in the 200 medley relay.
“It’s been a great day,” Hamann said. “I’ve been on the team for three years and we have never swam a relay under state qualifying. We finally did that and it was a pretty big milestone. The relay was great and I give a lot of the credit to my teammates.”
Cary-Grove lost that relay to the Jacobs/Dundee-Crown co-op team by just .29 hundredths of a second with Jacobs finishing in 1:38.21. The state qualifying time is 1:38.88. Cary-Grove coach Rick Schaefer said that while it was a loss, it was still under the state qualifying time.
“If you ask me, that was a winning effort,” Schaefer said. “The goal was to be 1:39 or better and we did it. Going into the state meet, we expect to be a little faster and they are going to go in there knowing they already got it.”
Hamann along with Jacobs’ Alex Reinbrecht and Ryne Quinlan were named the MVPs of the event while Huntley’s Ryan Czarnecki was named the top newcomer. Reinbrecht won the 200 freestyle in 1:49.25 and added a victory in the 500 freestyle with a conference invite record time of 4:51.20.
Quinlan won the 100 freestyle in 50.70 and the 100 breaststroke in 1:01.20 along with being part of Jacobs’ winning 200 freestyle relay and 200 medley relay.