Rosary's the class of Metro Catholic meet

Remember the names of the athletes and teams that finished at the top of the Metro Catholic Aquatic Conference meet on Sunday - they're going to be somewhere toward the top of the final standings in three weeks when the state meet takes place.

Is that some boastful statement? Not at all. A year ago, the MCAC had four of the top 10 teams in Illinois - led by Rosary, which won its fourth straight conference title on Saturday. But Loyola, Benet and Fenwick are sure to also turn in decent results when everything is finally decided Nov. 20-21 in New Trier.

The conference has certainly lost none of its high-quality competition, as evidenced by the number of swimmers who took to the water on Sunday at Aurora's Vaughn Center pool who had "IHSA" beside their names. That demarcation signaled that a swimmer had already surpassed the state's qualifying standard in that event. Many events had multiple athletes already under the state cut, especially the 200-yard individual medley, which had 6 competitors under the state cut in the regular season.

Rosary was strong throughout the meet and was 395-342 better than runner-up Loyola. And leading the way in the water was senior Olivia Scott. Named the meet's Most Valuable Swimmer, Scott concluded her MCAC competition by winning the 200 IM, the 100 butterfly and swimming legs on the Beads' victorious 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay.

"It's really nice," Scott said. "It's the last conference meet. I thought we had great times considering where we are in the season."

Like nearly all the varsity swimmers have yet to go through the resting process known as tapering which provides large time drops when done properly. Those athletes will time their tapers to take effect either at the sectional or the state meet. So the sterling performances in the conference meet took place with the athletes working on the adrenaline of competition against their conference foes.

"It's hard but we all knew we needed to step it up," Scott said.

Scott made the decision to attend collegiate powerhouse Auburn this week.

"I'm just really, really happy," Scott said. "Now I can concentrate on my senior year's final meets. It's been really hard. I've been thinking about it all week. It was really stressful and I'm happy to have the decision made."

Benet scored 312 points and finished a strong third. The 200 medley relay was second and Maddi Webb was third in the 200 freestyle and second in the 100 freestyle.

"We come into conference and it's a chance to race but we're not tapered," Benet coach Nicole Koethe said. "So we get a chance to see how we swim on pure adrenaline. We did a good job. We actually had some time drops and we had some times that were right on our fastest times of the season."

Koethe said her team's performance augers well for the sectional and state meet sequence, which begins for the Redwings in two weeks at the Neuqua Valley sectional.

"It's a very fast conference meet," Koethe said. "It's very tough competition so it's great to come here and swim against these top teams. It makes us feel good for how we'll swim once we get rested."

Saint Viator finished sixth in the 14-team meet. A fifth-place finish in the meet-ending 400 freestyle relay marked the team's best result.

"Last week, they were swimming really tired," Saint Viator coach Adam Clementi said. "Other than a few freshman swimmers who probably won't swim at sectionals, I didn't taper them. They got a sort of one night of rest before competing. But they're really exhausted all the way through. The nice thing is that their first 50s were pretty good and pretty consistent. But they didn't have a lot of punch at the end, which I expected. And in the second halves of their races, we saw some little mistakes that I would hope to clean up in the next two weeks."