St. Charles North claims 1st UEC title
Of the many things St. Charles North has accomplished with its boys swim team — sectional titles, state individual and relay titles and many All-America swimmers — one of the few things that hadn’t ever happened was for the team to experience a conference championship.
The North Stars added an Upstate Eight Conference title to their program’s resume on Saturday, claiming the title for the first time with a wire-to-wire victory in the swimming portion of the meet hosted at their own pool. Diving took place on Friday and that gave Neuqua Valley a lead entering Saturday’s competition.
“We’ve been second more times than I care to remember,” St. Charles North coach Rob Rooney said. “This is awesome. Any time you win something, it’s awesome. I’m really proud of how well these kids have done. I’m pretty happy with how we’ve done today.”
The North Stars won the meet-opening 200-yard medley relay and never trailed. Chris Dieter and Kyle Gannon went 1-2 in the 200 freestyle and Andrew Preusse won the 50 freestyle in the opening third of the meet.
Dieter won the 100 freestyle and Gannon won the 500 freestyle in the middle third before the North Stars won both freestyle relays at the end of the meet. The North Stars had never swept the relays in a conference meet — and they did so on Saturday in both the varsity and the junior-varsity meet.
But of those victories, the medley relay was perhaps the most important. Preusse, Justin Jacobson, Nick Kowaleski and Kyle Passini swam that relay.
“We definitely wanted to go out and swim well in the medley relay,” Passini said. “We all wanted to go fast today. After that 200 medley relay, we were on fire.”
Now the North Stars return to the training pool to get ready for the Feb. 19 sectional, which they host.
“This meet shows what we’ve been doing, training hard and working,” Passini said. “We’re going to go back to that and we’re looking forward to having a great sectional meet and a great state meet.”
Passini had the kind of solid afternoon that helped create the conference title. He was fourth in the 50 freestyle and second to Dieter in the 100 freestyle and then anchored the 400 freestyle relay to first place to cap the meet.
“I swam personal bests across the board, so I’m very happy,” Passini said.
All swim teams suffered a midweek disruption due to the heavy snowstorm that hit northern Illinois and caused schools to close on Wednesday and Thursday. Practices were canceled and the North Stars had to work on their own for two days.
“I was confident they knew what to do to get ready,” Rooney said. “We swam Tuesday morning before we were shut down Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday. But I trusted they knew what they were doing. We lifted (Friday) morning, swam in the afternoon and then swam here today. Everyone in the state is in the same boat.”
Rooney said he doesn’t feel the disruption will hamper his team’s efforts as it gets ready for the sectional meet.
“We’ve done enough work, training-wise” he said. “Now it’s a question of getting through what we need to get through to them.”
St. Charles East placed fifth in the meet in a tightly-bunched middle group in the seven-team meet. Lake Park was third and scored 194 points. Waubonsie Valley was fourth on 185 points, just 1 point ahead of the Saints.
“We were a roller coaster today,” St. Charles East coach Joe Cabel said. “We were good, then bad and good and then bad. There wasn’t any pattern to it. It might have been us missing a couple of days this week. I don’t know.”
Cabel said his junior-varsity swimmers — which were already resting in anticipation of the conference meet and the end of their season — recorded 100 percent time drops and showed that there is something to anticipate as the team begins preparation for the sectional meet.
“Those kids were awesome, across-the-board 100 percent,” Cabel said. “It was just the varsity guys.”
That sectional meet takes place at St. Charles North, which has been the Saints home pool this season while ongoing construction work has taken place at their own Norris Center pool.
“We’ve got to get people believing in themselves,” Cabel said. “We need some of them to be a little more confident in their swims. They seemed a little tentative today.”
The Saints gained their lone conference champion in Shaun Seuschek, who recovered in the second half of the 100 butterfly to defeat Waubonsie Valley’s Adam Stacklin.
“Today going into the water, I was a little confused because we had those two days off,” Seuschek said. “Getting in, I started feeling good. And during the races, I felt really good. When I touched the wall and looked up at my times, I was happy. Going into sectionals, I’m a lot faster than I was last year, and I’m happy about that.”
Seuschek was also second in the 200 individual medley.
“Shaun was not tentative,” Cabel said. “He went out after it every time he swam. That’s the only way you’re going to swim your best. And that’s the way our JV kids swam. So I’m sure our varsity kids will do that at the sectional.”