Tired Rosary wins own invitational

Not for the first time, Rosary's girls swim team entered the pool for its annual invitational slightly weary in its legs.

Rosary hosts an annual 10K walkathon to support the school, and the event took place Friday, the afternoon before the Beads' Saturday morning meet. The same situation occurred in 2013, and Rosary won the swim meet - and that was the same Saturday, when the Beads finished 389-270 winners over Naperville North in a five-team invitational.

"I'm actually really happy," Rosary coach Bill Schalz said. "You could tell some of the kids' legs were tired. But we're tired anyway at this time of the year, so it's not that big a deal. I was surprised that we had a handful of season-best times and nobody bailed out on their races."

Rosary's Erin Hart won the 50-yard freestyle and the 100 freestyle and was her team's only victory in multiple individual events.

"I felt we did really well," Hart said. "It shows that even though we're right in the middle of the season and we're getting to the really hard sets, that we're still able to pull through and win meets."

Hart ran her 10K walkathon, as did many of her teammates.

"We run usually during the week," Hart said. "This was just a little more than we usually do."

Alexis Yager won the 200 IM and swam a strong second leg in the meet-ending 400 free relay as the Beads closed the meet with another event victory. Yager said she walked some of the walkathon but ran "to get ahead of people."

"My legs really hurt," Yager said. "But you can't think about that during this invitational - or any invitational. You've just got to swim."

Yager swam with Hart, Georgia Young and Emily Ryan on the 400 free relay.

"We've got four solid kids on that relay right now," Schalz said.

Rosary also got an individual race wins from Camryn Streid in the 100 fly and won the 200 free relay with a team composed of Elaina Ricci, Hart, Young and Talia Carello.

"We are a lot better this year and our team is really deep, which will make it fun when we get to state and see how we can do with it," Hart said.

Naperville North had individual race wins from Connie Zhang in the 200 free and Emily Chuang in the 100 back.

"They swam extremely well," Naperville North coach Andy McWhirter said. "We had some very best times out of them, which was very good to see. A meet like this is a chance to see Neuqua, (Naperville) Central and Rosary and see what the end of the year will look like. They can see their sectional competition and see that they can compete with them."

Naperville Central finished third and gained an individual event champion when Audrey Coffey won the 500 freestyle.

"We were solid," Naperville Central coach Mike Adams said. "It was nothing great, but it was solid. I was more happy with how (Coffey) swam the race. She came home well in that race, and that was really, really good."

Neuqua Valley finished fourth, won the 200 medley relay and had individual race wins from Amanda Brockmeier in the 100 breaststroke.