Beautiful Bookends for a Grateful Old Coach at VISAA States

Oldest brother Kevin Koehr, State Champion in 100 Back in 2006, and Youngest brother Connor Koehr, State Champion in Diving in 2024

675 athletes from 54 Teams, music blasting, kids singing and dancing, costumes in a parade, hugs and tears from Seniors swimming for the last time, and Seton families gathering between sessions at our rented river house for Pasta and Chipotle feasts.  Most importantly, we saw loads of huge PR performances from our Swimmers and Divers and a Girl’s VISAA Division II State Championship Runner-up, an individual Diving State Champion, and a Diving Coach of the Year!  These are just a few of the highlights from the 2024 VISAA State Swim and Dive Championship at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center in Christiansburg, VA.

Last weekend (Feb 16-17, 2024), we took 32 swimmers and divers and a like number of parents into this incredibly fast meet – and after a rough first day, the swimming and diving I saw from our team was beyond my expectations.  Our kids always seem to excel on the big stage every year at States, but even I was amazed by the results – particularly on the 2^nd day.  We had huge drops from a number of swimmers, including a Boy’s relay that dropped almost six (6) seconds and several swimmers that had multi-second drops in their individual events and relay splits.

Seton wasn’t officially a co-host for the meet, but I was so proud to watch Charles Seltman serve as one of Deck Referees, David Wilson serve as a Stroke and Turn Judge, and Hank Konstanty assist with all the Scoring.  The Meet required about 125 volunteers, so it was great to have little Seton filling some of the key roles.  Seton really shined last weekend, both in and out of the water.

It was an incredibly fun trip for our team.  For many years now, we have been renting a house off AirBnB so that we had a place to gather between sessions for comradery and team meals.  This time, we had a large and comfortable house in a remote area only a few miles from the pool – just beautiful!  The relatively warm February day on Thursday night allowed us all to enjoy each other’s company for a wonderful team meeting where the Captains recognized each member of the State team and all the new members got to sign “the cone”.

“The Cone” was an old traffic cone that Shane Koehr took from the Seton parking lot for use as a megaphone at the meet several years ago.  Like all good thieves, he signed his name to his booty, and the next thing I knew, everyone wanted to sign their name on The Cone too.  The best traditions bubble up organically, and this is a great example.

In addition to the tradition of having all the new members of the State team sign “The Cone” as part of our Thursday night dinner, we also have a tradition of the “Keeper of the Cone” choosing to whom they will pass it on.  This year’s “Keeper”, Maggie Gibbons, chose to honor Connor Koehr as the “Keeper of the Cone” for the next year.

Thank you, Captains, for your great leadership this weekend and this entire season!

Thanks to the leadership of Mrs. Katie Condon, with a team of fellow Moms including Mrs. Brox, Mrs. Miller, and Mrs. Gibbons, we had wonderful team meals that didn’t require long waits for restaurants to serve drinks and take orders.  I also noticed that several of the Dads were dutifully fulfilling their assigned tasks also.  Mrs. Condon knows how to get things done!  I’m quite sure no other team was eating like we were at States this year!

And I sure hope you have been enjoying all of the photos and videos that have been posted by Mr. Paul Fifield on his Seton Swim & Dive Photo Stream.  There is a link under Announcements on the Home Page or you can find them here.  The photos are amazing!

Bookends for Coach Koehr

It seems like a lifetime ago that I was at the University of Virginia with my oldest son Kevin at the 2006 VSIS State Championships (it wasn’t yet the VISAA, and Connor Koehr wasn’t even born yet) where he was seeded first in 100 Backstroke.  Even though his top competition chose to swim 100 Free instead of 100 Backstroke, leaving Kevin to win an individual State Championship by more than two and half seconds, I was screaming like the 42-year-old, young father that I was.

Fast forward nearly two (2) decades where that same father, past 60-years-old now and approaching the end of a 25-year coaching career at Seton, got to watch his youngest son repeat the feat in much more nerve-racking fashion.  The emotions were just as strong, but they were displayed very differently.  Who said that old men can’t cry.

Connor came into the Meet as the top seed in Diving, and after the Preliminaries (i.e., the first five (5) dives), he found himself in a very tight competition.  He was still first with 174.65 points, but two (2) excellent divers were right behind him – Everett Mitchell (SR) from Fork Union Military Academy (FUMA) had 172.15 points and JD Chen (SO) from Collegiate School (COOL) had 164.65 points.

Connor’s 6^th dive and the first dive of the Semi-Finals (i.e., the next three (3) dives) did not go particularly well for Connor.  His 5122D, one somersault with one full twist, scored only 22.80 points that left an opening for JD Chen to jump into first place.

On the 7^th dive, Connor pulled back ahead, but the 8^th dive was particularly strong for Everett Mitchell.  After correcting one of the Degrees of Difficulty (DD) in the scoring system (i.e., the multiplier used to calculate the score from the judges scores), Connor found himself in a pretty good-sized hole going into the Finals.  He was 9.50-points behind Everett Mitchell and .05-points behind JD Chen.

The good news, or the bad news if you are a nervous father, is that Connor saved some of his highest degree of difficulty dives for the Finals (i.e., the last three (3) dives).  After Connor’s 9^th dive, an Inward one and half somersaults in the pike position, Everett actually added .40-points to his lead – Connor was running out of dives to catch him.

I was very encouraged when I heard the announcer announce that Connor’s 10^th dive would be a Reverse Dive in the Pike Position.  Even though it is not an easy dive, I knew Connor could perform it beautifully – and he did!  He got almost all 7.0’s from the judges, and the gap was nearly closed.

Going into the final dive, Connor was still in 3^rd place with a score of 320.45, but he was right behind JD at 322.45 and Everett at 324.65.  It was going to come down to the last dive.

I could see the look on Connor’s face at that point in the competition – he looked completely calm.  I was thinking, “How can he be so calm?”.  Well, it turned out that he knew one thing that I didn’t know.  He knew that his final dive from a front 2 and half somersaults in the tuck position – a dive with a very high degree of difficulty (DD) – and the other two (2) divers were simply doing inward dives in the pike position.  When I was a kid, we used to call that dive a “cut-away”, and even I could do it at the pool in the summer.

But the fact remained that he still had to complete a front two and a half with the State Championship on the line – high DDs don’t matter if you are multiplying them against low scores.  6’s and 6.5’s got him 42-points on the dive, the 2^nd highest point total for a single dive all day, and it was over.  Connor had won by 10.80-points on the last dive!

Not only was that good enough for the gold medal, it also earned Connor Diver of the Meet honors.

Here’s a video compilation of his 11-Dives put together by his brother Dan who is currently deployed in Iraq as a Captain with the Army Corps of Engineers.

As happy and emotional as I was about the victory, there was one (1) other person who I think may have been even happier – Coach Ashley Keapproth.

It was just a few short years ago, when Connor was in 8^th grade, that Coach Keapproth volunteered to mentor our young boy and girl divers.  At the time, all were new to diving, including Mick Fioramonti (SR), Jacob Oswald (JR), and Rose Waldron (JR).  In the years that followed, more of the current Junior boys class decided to join the team including Gus Kohlhaas (JR) and Max Gonzalez (JR).  The girls started coming too, including Juniors Elizabeth Francis (JR) and Anna Russo (JR), sophomore Maria Miller (SO), and 8^th grader Meghan Condon (8).

Unlike most of the top competitors at States, none of our divers had any club diving experience – they were all pure high school-only divers.  But with a coach like Coach Keapproth, that became an advantage.

The results that Coach Keapproth got from this group of ten (10) divers at States was remarkable, particularly for the boys:

• Seton male divers scored in 1^st (Connor), 6^th (Mick), 10^th (Jacob), and 11^th (Gus). Max Gonzalez (JR) was also 13^th at the end of semi-finals but the rules allow a single team to only advance four (4) scoring divers to Finals.  That is not going to stop me from claiming that Coach Keapproth had a most remarkable result – five (5) divers in the top-13 in the State!
• For the girls, Seton got 13^th (Rose), 18^th (Maria), 24^th (Anna), 26^th (Meghan), and 29^th (Elizabeth).

Given those results, it surprised exactly no one that the other Coaches voted Seton’s Coach Ashley Keapproth as the VISAA Diving Coach of the Year for the boys.

Congratulations Coach Keapproth!

Just for some fun, I thought you might all like to see a young Ashley Craw (not yet Ashley Keapproth) from her junior year at Father Ryan High School outside of Nashville, TN performing in a music video for the song “Dive” by Steven Curtis Chapman.  The female diver in the video at about the 2:00 and the 2:40 minute marks is our very own Coach Ashley Keapproth!

Scoring

This Meet was unbelievably fast.  Imagine a boys 400 Free Relay where the slow guy went 47.99!  Of the 24 total events, there were two (2) new Meet Records.  With only the top 16 finishers getting points, it is very hard to score at all in a meet like this.  The result is a premium on the fastest swimmers, particularly in the Division II.

Another aspect of the Meet that was a lot of fun to watch was the Girl’s and Boy’s competition for the Division II title.  Both championships came down to the final 400 Free Relay.  The noise during those races was deafening!

Recall that our State Championship is scored like one big championship meet.  The team with the highest point total is declared the “Overall” State Champion, and the Division II team with the most points is declared the “Division II” State Champion.  That scoring system generated a great deal of fun for the smaller schools like Seton.

Here’s an excerpt from the final scoring of a very exciting meet -the Division II schools in bold:

Girls

1. Collegiate School                   343
2. Catherine’s School                 253
3. Anne’s-Belfield                        141
4. Trinity Episcopal                     140
5. Trinity Christian                      122
6. Oakcrest                                   120
7. Stephen’s/St. Agnes               116
8. Potomac School                     116
9. Norfolk Academy                   111
10. The Madeira School              109.5
11. Paul VI                                      101
12. Cape Henry Collegiate         84 – Division II Champ
13. Seton School                           75 – Division II Runner-up
14. Bishop Ireton                          65
15. John Paul the Great               59
16. Bishop O’Connell                   58
17. StoneBridge School             32 – Division II
18. Fredericksburg Christian   32 – Division II

Boys

1. Christopher’s School             230
2. Trinity Episcopal                     217
3. Norfolk Academy                   217
4. Collegiate School                   164
5. Anne’s-Belfield                       150
6. Paul VI                                      145
7. Woodberry Forest                  144.5
8. Bishop O’Connell                    113
9. The Covenant School            106 – Division II Champ
10. Immanuel Christian             101 – Division II Runner-up
11. Flint Hill School                        86
12. Seton School                            85.5 – Division II
13. Trinity Christian                     72 – Division II
14. Virginia Episcopal                  62 – Division II    
15. Potomac School                      60

The Girl’s Came Very Close

I came into the Meet expecting the main competition for our girls to be Cape Henry Collegiate.  Because Cape Henry didn’t come to the Division II Invitational, I really didn’t know how they would perform, but I felt reasonably confident based on the results posted on SwimCloud that we would have our hands full.

Once the Psych Sheet came out, my hunch was confirmed – it showed them winning by 16-points, 87-71.  Not impossible, but it would be very difficult.  With Stella Paradise (SR) still recovering from the flu and Ariana’s coach at OCCS thoughtfully deciding that, after a week of missing practice for the flu, it might be a good idea to work her extra hard the week of her High School State Championship meet, things looked to be even harder, particularly on the first day.  I felt so badly for Ariana that a professional coach would do that to her.

We started with our Girl’s 200 Medley Relay of Ariana Aldeguer (FR), Clara Condon (JR), Stella Paradise (SR), and Elodie Brox (JR).  With the obstacles we carried into the first day, it was a remarkable performance that we held our 10^th seed.  Stella was particularly courageous since she felt nauseous before her swim but still stayed within .17 seconds of her PR 50 Fly split.

Cape Henry’s girls’ relay over-performed their seed and took 6^th with a group of underclassmen, the oldest of which was a sophomore.  We were down to CHC by a score of 30-14.

In the 200 IM, Ariana Aldeguer (FR) was up again with another courageous swim.  With the heart of a champion, she powered through the event to take 7^th place.   She was a bit off the time she wanted to go I know, but I also know that she gave it her absolute best she had.  No one can ask more than that.  Fortunately for the competition, Cape Henry dropped from their seed by the same number of points, so we held our ground.

Cape Henry gained just a couple of points in the very competitive 50 Free with two (2) swimmers scoring instead of just one (1), but Diving was also going on at the same time with a chance to score points in an event where Cape Henry had no entrants.  Rose Waldron (JR) entered the competition seeded 14^th and added a point for Seton by finishing in 13^th place.  Maria Miller (SO) made a strong showing also, but she just missed the cut by only a point and a half.

In 100 Fly, Clara Condon (JR) swam a season best time to earn a spot in the Consolation final and score a much-needed point in the Finals.  It was a great way to end an otherwise tough first day for Seton, but the second day turned out to be destined to get better.

The second day started with 100 Free where a very fast Cape Henry freshman scored in 11^th place.  Then it was Ariana’s turn again.  This time, she was facing the 500 Free.  I know she didn’t get the time she wanted after her sickness and excessive week of practice, but that didn’t stop her from delivering the points that we needed for the team.  I was so proud of the heart she showed, and she was rewarded with a 5^th place finish.

I knew going into the meet that if we were going to win, it was going to have to be with the relays.  Our Girls 200 Free Relay of Stella Paradise (SR), Clara Condon (JR), Maggie Gibbons (SR), and Elodie Brox (JR) delivered a season best time on the strength of Clara’s 26.16 split and Maggie’s 25.35 split.

Clara’s split was 1.59 seconds faster than her previous season-best, and that great swim jumped her from the “B” Relay in Prelims to the “A” Relay in Finals.  The relay entered the Finals seeded 10^th after Prelims and finished by scoring in 9^th place – right on our original seed.

The next two events were 100 Backstroke and 100 Breaststroke where I chose to enter no one in order to save them for the relays.  Unfortunately, Cape Henry had decided to forgo the 200 Free Relay to allow two (2) of their girls to swim individually.  They scored 18 points – the equivalent of a 9^th place relay finish, so in their case, it was probably a good call.

So, the outcome was going to come down to the final 400 Free Relay.  We were up by 5-points, 63-58, but they had a relay seeded 6^th at 3:42.93.  We were seeded 18^th at 3:54.99.  It didn’t look good, but that didn’t stop our girls relay of Ariana Aldeguer (FR), Maggie Gibbons (SR), Stella Paradise (SR), and Elodie Brox (JR) from making a hard run at it.

In Prelims, they cut almost 6-seconds off their season-best seed time to qualify in 13^th place for Finals.  Maggie Gibbons (SR) was the star of this show with an amazing split of 57.00 in Prelims and then 56.50 in the Finals – her previous season-best split was 58.40!  Stella Paradise (SR), also a senior swimming in her last event, shared Maggie’s joy with her own season-best split- by more than 1.5 seconds.

In the end, our final relay jumped from the non-scoring 18^th seed to 11^th place and 12-points.  But Cape Henry held their 6^th seed, scored 26-points, and beat us by 9-points for the Girls Division II State Championship.  They definitely earned it.

So, congratulations to our Girls for being the VISAA Division II State Runner-up.  Next year, we’ll have to get back in the pool and figure this one out.  The oldest scorer on the Cape Henry Collegiate girls’ team was a sophomore.  Diving could be the key!

The Boys Beat Trinity Christian, But We Couldn’t Catch the Others

The Boys’ competition was much more familiar to us – because it was mainly in our VCAC Conference.

As the Psych Sheet showed, Tyler Phillips (SO), Justin Kim (SR), and the very fast boys from Trinity Christian School looked to be the favorites, projected to score 133 points.  They were closely followed by the Wolf brothers of Immanuel Christian School who were projected to score 118 points.  Next up was Seton, projected to score 103.

The wild card in this game was The Covenant School who beat us on the last relay at last year’s meet with Will Charlton (SO) at the anchor.  In the end, Will, and his younger brother Ben Charlton (8), would outperform their 80-point projection, and win with tremendous performances in both the 200 Free and 400 Free Relays.  That’s the playbook to win the Division II State Championship, and The Covenant School played it to perfection.

Like the girls, our boys started slowly on the first day, and came on blazing on the second day.

Our Boys Medley Relay of Connor Koehr (JR), Drew Nguyen (JR), Lionel Martinez (FR), and Michael Brox (JR) were all just a bit off of their best splits, but collectively that dropped us from the 13th seed to 16^th after Prelims and 16^th after Finals.  None of us was too worried because we knew that the vast majority of our points would come on Day 2 with Diving and the other two relays.  We did, however, have two (2) more big boys’ swims on Day 1.

First up was Michael Brox (JR) in the 50 Free.  If you told me at the beginning of the year that we would have a high-school only swimmer, who has never practiced more than 3-days per week with Seton, in the Finals of Boys’s 50 Free at States, I would have thought you were crazy.

Everyone in Top-16 of the Boys’ 50 Free at States is a big-time USA swimmer who is going on to swim in college, yet Michael hung with them like he belonged – ultimately taking 15^th place.  I know you were hungry for more Michael, but you have every right to be incredibly proud of what you have accomplished this year – and you have another year!

The morning ended with freshman Lionel Martinez (FR) in the 100 Fly.  Like Ariana, Lionel’s coach at OCCS seemed to completely ignore the fact that Lionel had his high school State Championship meet over the weekend and chose to work him extra-hard in practice right before the meet.   I understand the training cycle for a USA swimmer working towards March championship meets, but a lot of other USA coaches seemed to find the balance this year (and over the last 24-years that I’ve been watching), so I know it can be done by coach that cares to do it.

That didn’t stop Lionel from giving it all he had though.  In the 100 Fly Prelims, he took it out in a blazing 25.08 but was just too tired from practice to bring it home.  The result of his valiant effort was an 18^th place finish in Prelims or 2^nd alternate for the Finals that night.  I know you gave it your best effort Lionel, so you have every right to be proud of what you accomplished this season – and you are only a freshman!

On Day 2, the plan was to make a long shot run at the Division II State Championship with Diving and our two (2) fast relays.

The day started out with our five (5) male divers all finishing Prelims in the top-13 as I discussed in detail above.  Too bad only four (4) could score!  Even with only four (4), we scored an incredible 46-points in this one (1) event – more than half of our team’s final total!

One complication of this year’s schedule was that Diving occurred over top of the Swimming Prelims so if our relays were going to make the Finals, they were going to have to qualify without Connor Koehr (JR) who had his hands full with a pair of kids from Fork Union and Collegiate at the moment.

We all knew that our best shot to score big was with our 200 Free Relay of Lionel Martinez (FR), Joe Borneman (JR), Liam Halisky (JR), and Michael Brox (JR).   The pressure was on Joe Borneman (JR) who was stepping in for Connor – and Joe delivered.  So did Liam who swam .12 faster than his previous best 50 Free split, and Michael who anchored in 21.65!

Our Boys were all smiles when they realized that they had qualified in 8^th place, bumping Trinity Christian School out of the Championship Final by only .19 seconds!  Their time of 1:30.85 was close to our team record of 1:30.07 from the 2010 State Championship, and these boys were hungry to knock Jameson Hill, Daniel Koehr, Connor Cook, and David Basinger, all well into their 30s now, off the Board.

In Finals, they got close at 1:30.49 with the help of Connor’s lifetime best split of 22.85, but it got us 22-points for the 8^th place relay finish.  Unfortunately, Covenant got 24-points for 7^th place, just 0.10 seconds ahead of us.

Entering the 400 Free Relay, Covenant, Immanuel Christian, Seton, and Trinity Christian were tightly packed in the scoring, 82, 75, 72, and 65-points, respectively.  Without Tyler Phillips (SO) on the Trinity Christian relay, I knew we were likely to hold them off, but the other two (2) relays were a different story.

Immanuel Christian had all three (2) Wolf brothers on their relay, and Covenant had both Charlton brothers on theirs, but our boys sure gave it a valiant effort.  With Diving still proceeding, we had the same problem with this relay as we did with the 200 Free Relay – we would need to qualify without Connor.

In Prelims, our relay of Lionel Martinez (FR), Michael Brox (JR), Max Wilson (JR) and Drew Nguyen (JR) crushed their season-best time by more than two (2) seconds (even without Connor) and qualified in 10^th.  Michael split an unbelievable 49.20, and Max Wilson earned the right to be the 4^th man on the relay at Finals with his split of 53.05, .64 faster than his previous best.

Unfortunately, both Covenant and Immanuel Christian qualified in the Championship Final at 4^th and 7^th, respectively, so unless they got DQ’d, rule dictated that the worst they could do was 8^th and the best we could do was 9^th.  (Of course, we have seen meet decided on a DQ for a 400 Free Relay 😉).

In Finals, with the addition of Connor Koehr (JR), they dropped another 3.16 seconds to hold 10^th place.  Lionel was right on his PR lead-off, and the other three (3) crushed their PR splits.  Connor split 51.47 (0.50 better), Max split 52.51 (1.18 better), and Michael split an unbelievable 49.02!  I promise you that there was not another high-school only swimmer in the meet splitting 49.02!

We made a great run on the 2^nd day of the meet, but even with those incredible relay performances and all those Diving points, it wasn’t quite enough.  We ended up with 86-points, behind Immanuel Christian’s 101 and Covenant’s 106, but ahead of Trinity Christian’s 71.  We’ll take a victory of Trinity Christian any day 😉.

Other Great Performances and Personal Records

I’ve spent a few thousand words describing the most impactful swims for Seton in the State Championship competition, but we had a number of other great performances too.  Our total of 13 additional Personal Records brings our final season total to 1,205 Personal Records!

That is simply remarkable – by far the highest total is Seton Swimming history.  Here are the great performances that I have not previously mentioned:

• Joseph Borneman (SO) rocked his final chance of the season a flat-start 100 Free leading off a 400 Free Relay in Prelims. How about a 53.73!  That’s 2.61 seconds than his previous PR.  He also came within .04 seconds of breaking the 24-second barrier in 50 Free after a .17 second flat-start PR.
• Clara Condon (JR) ended an outstanding meet with a 3.36 second PR in 100 Free leading off a 400 Free Relay.
• Haley Fifield (JR) cut a whopping .86 seconds from her 50 Free PR.
• Maggie Gibbons (SR) hit a .12 second PR in her final flat-start 50 Free.
• Philomena Kay (FR) came within .01 of breaking the 28-second barrier after her .19 second PR in 50 Free. Next year!
• Drew Nguyen (JR) went 24.71 in 50 Free, a PR by .30 seconds.
• Maggie Schroer (8) is looking to be a key relay swimmer next season, and she showed it with another 1.03 second PR in 50 Free.
• Daniel Sokban (FR) was so impressive this season – I can’t wait to see how far he can go. He swam 50 Free twice and beat his PR both times.  In the Bonus 50 Free event he cut .12 seconds, and while leading off a relay, he cut .20 seconds.   I also highlight Daniel’s 100 Free split of 54.53 in a relay which was almost a whole second faster than his previous best.
• Max Wilson (JR) used his opportunity in the Bonus 50 Free to cut .42 seconds from his PR.

Tempest Swimming is a Thing!

While I spent a great deal of energy on things related to Seton Swimming & Diving this past weekend, I have to say that I really enjoyed watching our sister team from the Trinity School at Meadow View perform with such excellence and joy.

In their first-ever State Championship Meet, the Tempest girls finished in 27^th place with 13-points, and the Tempest boys finished in 26^th place with 10-points.

I saw some remarkable swimming in both the relay and individually, including the following individual scoring swims:

• Aine Maloney (JR) was the highest scoring Tempest swimmer this weekend four (4) swims in the Finals. Individually,
  • Aine beat her lifetime best in 100 Fly during Prelims by 1.92 seconds to go 1:00.75. Then in the Finals, she scored in 15^th with another .13 second drop.
  • Then in 100 Breaststroke, she swam another lifetime best in Prelims, this time by a whopping 2.28 seconds. In the Finals she scored in 14^th place after another .49 second drop to 1:09.10!
• Elijah Soto (SO) had a great swim in the Prelims of 100 Fly, beating his previous PR by .48 seconds to qualify in 16^th He also finished 31^st in 100 Backstroke.

We entered the Meet saying that we wanted to have kids “swim at night”, and amazingly, we got four (4) of our five (5) relays back to the Finals:

• Our Girls 200 Medley Relay of Lauren Kelley (SO), Sydney Arllen (SO), Aine Maloney (JR), and Reagan Mazanec (FR) dropped more than 2-seconds from their season-best time to qualify in 14^th place, a place that they held for the Finals. Lauren and Aine had particularly good splits, beating their previous bests by .59 seconds and .67 seconds, respectively.
• Our Girls 200 Free Relay of Aine Maloney (JR), Reagan Mazanec (FR), Sydney Arllen (SO), and Lauren Kelley (SO) scored in 16^th place with some great splits for everyone, particularly Aine (by .90 seconds), Sydney (by 1.63 seconds!), and Lauren (by 1.02 seconds).
• Our Boys 200 Free Relay of Elijah Soto (SO), Eamon Schrock (FR), Joe Kelley (SR), and Shane Monroe (JR) had a superior swim with all four (4) members of the relay swimming lifetime best splits to score in 14^th Elijah led-off at a blazing 22.42, Eamon split 24.05, Joe split an amazing 24.20, and Shane anchored at 22.74.  If we can find a 4^th swimmer for next year, we should be returning a very competitive relay here.
• Our Boys 400 Free Relay of Elijah Soto (SO), Eamon Schrock (FR), Joseph Kelley (SR), and Shane Monroe (JR), repeated their outstanding performance from the 200 Free Relay with another set of four (4) PR splits. Elijah broke :50 with a lead-off 49.95, Eamon split 53.96 (previous best 55.83), Joe stunned everyone with a 56.56 (previous best 58.30), and finally Shane anchored at 52.39 (previous best 55.68).  This really dropped almost 11-seconds from their previous best time to jump into the Finals and score in 15^th
• Our Girls 400 Free Relay of Lauren Kelley (SO), Sydney Arllen (SO), Charlotte Mazanec (SO), and Reagan Mazanec (FR) just missed Finals, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t swim well. I was particularly pleased with Sydney’s split of 1:03.41 (.72 seconds faster than previously) and Charlotte’s split of 1:04.80 (.86 seconds faster than previously).

And finally, here are the other Personal Record swims that I have yet to mention:

• Shane Monroe (JR) beat his previous best in 50 Free by .03 to go 23.89 from a flat-start.
• Lauren Kelley (SO), the one who started it all, took full advantage of her last opportunity to swim the 50 Free with a .19 second PR 26.65.
• Sydney Arllen (SO) had a tremendous swim in 100 Breaststroke where she placed 34^th after a big .73 second Personal Record.
• Joseph Kelley (SR) started and ended his great Tempest Swimming career with a .12 second PR in 50 Free. I’m sure he will always remember his 25.01 at States.  You could have been a contender, Joe!

Next Season, Conference Champions again?

We are only graduating seven (7) senior swimmers and one (1) senior diver, while we currently have 75 swimmers who are 9^th grade and below.  Our Junior class is a big one with 26 swimmers and divers, so our Senior class next year may be the biggest we’ve ever had!  It is hard to imagine that we won’t be stronger next season than we have been this season.

Based on our performance at the Conference and State Championships this year, I am clearly excited about our chances to win both the Boys and Girls Conference Championship next season and compete well for the Boys and Girls State Championships.  With the power of our relays and the improvement we are seeing with our divers, I think two (2) more State Championships are certainly possible.

We also need to have another great recruiting year inside the school.  There are plenty of strong swimmers that have either never been on the team or would be great to have back on the team.  Seton Swimming is a great community within Seton School.  Let’s use the off-season to expand that community for next year.

Awards are All That Remain

Our Swimming Awards are set for Sunday, March 3^rd at Renaissance Montessori School starting at 2:00 p.m.  Thank you to Mrs. Condon, Mrs. Dalrymple, and Mrs. Blanchette for taking charge of the planning for the event.  I’m traveling a lot this week and next so I’m not exactly sure what is planned beyond that, but I think it may involve delicious treats.

Final Thoughts

It certainly has been another great season for Seton, and I’m quite encouraged by our future here.  I’ve written in past blogs of the great joy that comes from achieving things that you never thought possible by working hard, believing in yourself and taking a risk.  I saw countless examples of that this season, and I’ll tell you truth – you swimmers are not the only one who get great joy out of it.

At the end of recent seasons, I also spent a lot of time writing about our GEMS: Gratitude, Excellence, Meekness and Sacrifice.  Those are the values that have powered our team toward a commonality of purpose and a mutual support for one another to do always do our best with the gifts that God has provided.  I feel particularly good about the fact that we were able to tap into that power this year – and the results speak for themselves.

So even though the season is over, we are still a team.  I look forward to seeing you all support each other for the rest of the year outside the water the way our State Team supported each other this past weekend in the water.

Coach Jim Koehr