Boys swimming: Neuqua Valley gets warmed up in a hurry
The Neuqua Valley boys swimming team finished second in its first event at Saturday's 37th annual Wildcat Relays at West Chicago.
Too bad. But to make up for it, the Wildcats essentially ran the table, winning the remaining 10 events, the only blemish being a disqualification in the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay.
That effort easily propelled Neuqua Valley to the meet title, with 314 points. Waubonsie Valley was second with 282 points, while York was fourth (210) and host West Chicago-Batavia co-op was fifth (188).
Here's the thing: The meet was the first of the year for Neuqua Valley. That's probably a harbinger of good things for the rest of the season.
"Normally, we have a couple of meets, but I think the guys were a little extra fired up," Wildcats coach Chad Allen said. "A lot of these teams have swam a couple of times already, and I think they just like the atmosphere of the relay meet."
By far the most tense race of the day was the 800-yard freestyle relay, where Neuqua Valley and Waubonsie Valley battled neck and neck the entire race. The Wildcats' Nate Cobb managed to slip just ahead of the Warriors' Jake Darlinger in the last lap.
"We knew it was going to be very close," Cobb said. "They've got a great relay. Those are guys that we swim with over at Fox Valley, so we know them very well.
"Going into that last leg, they kept it tight throughout. We had a body-and-a-half length, (and) I saw Jake right there at the 75, and I knew we were going to be in for a great finish."
Added Darlinger: "I just really wanted to win. We've been training really hard and I wanted to see what I could take it out in."
The other impressive performance by Neuqua Valley, in a day full of them, was the 200 breaststroke relay, where the second-seeded Wildcats won in 1:56.14, a full three seconds faster than top-seeded Waubonsie Valley. Neuqua Valley's entry in that event was Sathya Subramanian, Rohan Nagori, Matt Townsend and Preston Waldusky.
Waubonsie Valley kicked off the meet by slipping past Neuqua Valley in the 200 medley relay with a time of 1:40.96, less than a second ahead of the Wildcats. From there the Warriors managed five runner-up finishes.
"We have a really strong group of guys that are here," Waubonsie Valley coach Christopher Hagenbaumer said. "We're missing a couple of guys that are swimming down south this week, and we're also swimming really, really tired. All I asked the guys to do today was race hard and do the best they possibly could. I couldn't ask for anything more."
York was paced by a second-place finish in the 400 medley relay behind the efforts of Ben Harrington, Anthony Bauer, Connor Groya and Isaac Marlott. The team had to come back from hanging in third place most of the race to jumping into the runner-up spot in the last two sets of laps. That left coach Mark Laurich beaming.
"Nice group of young kids stepped up," Launch said. "Just real solid kids, working well together, building confidence, which is important. Groya has stepped upon and taken on a leadership role, as a freshman."
West Chicago-Batavia's best finish was in the 200 freestyle relay, with a second-place finish in 1:31.64. Glenbard West-South co-op was sixth with 158 points behind its freshman-sophomore 200 freestyle relay, which took third in 1:42.19.