Vernon Hills is dressed for Mundelein's success

Mundelein notched wins.

Vernon Hills knotted ties.

At the suggestion of assistant coach Jim Pardun, Vernon Hills' boys swimming team shows up at meets this season wearing ties, which the Cougars put back on afterward. Pardun and head coach Adam Lueken even keep their “Vernon Hills blue” ties knotted tight during meets.

“It's kind of just to have our team stand out,” Cougars senior Kevin Lenz said. “Not everyone at our school does that.”

“We get a lot of compliments,” Lueken said.

Despite a pair of individual wins by Lenz, Mundelein stood out most Thursday night. Powered by 2 relay wins and 5 other first-place efforts, the host Mustangs improved to 3-0 (3-0 North Suburban Conference) with a 114-72 win.

“It thought it was good,” Mundelein coach Rahul Sethna said of his team's performance. “Coming out of Christmas break, everyone is pretty beat up and tired. We were looking to see what they could do tired. I thought we raced well. It's always hard in our pool when you don't have blocks. It makes such a difference, especially for (Vernon Hills) when they have such a nice pool. But I thought there were some good races throughout.”

One of the best races was the 100-yard butterfly, where Mustangs freshman Art Kasemets was the only swimmer to break a minute. He clocked a 59.53 to best runner-up Adnan Meskic (1:00.33) of Vernon Hills, despite swimming in Lane 6.

“I thought that was a great race for us,” Sethna. “I thought that was probably the best race that we had.”

Besides his blue tie, Lenz sported a red University of Wisconsin knit cap after the meet. He's waiting for his acceptance letter from the Big Ten school.

“If I get accepted, I will swim there,” Lenz said. “They're looking at me as a preferred walk-on.”

Lenz was focused. He won the 100 freestyle (50.97) and 100 breaststroke (1:04.27), and also swam on the winning 200 free relay (1:37.78) with Mark Genchanok, Meskic and Marc Madore.

“I was real happy with my 100 free because I haven't swam that in a while,” Lenz said. “I think that was a pretty good time without any blocks, which I'm not really used to, especially with no one really around me to race. ”

Mundelein junior Bryan Wiener easily won the 200 individual medley (2:16.38), despite being sick all week. He also placed third in the 500 free.

The Mustangs received other wins from Will Davidson in the 200 freestyle (1:55.57), Connor Black in the 50 freestyle (23.56) and Max Goin in the 100 backstroke (1:06.28). Mundelein captured the 200 medley relay (1:48.11) with Black, Kasemets, Goin and Davidson. The winning 400 freestyle relay featured Davidson, Matt Marcotte, Sean Falconer and Wiener.

Vernon Hills' Madore touched first in the 500 free (5:18.73).

Vernon Hills (1-2) saw its “C” 400 freestyle relay finish last, but that didn't matter. The all-diver foursome of Shivon Shaw, Grant Miller, Nathan Lightman and Alex Zuniga drew loud cheers of “DI-ver RE-lay!” from their teammates. Zuniga and Lightman had finished 1-2 in the diving competition.

The sophomore Shaw was the only experienced swimmer on the 400 relay and was the only Cougar who used flip turns.

“He actually beat another person,” Lueken said. “That was exciting.”