Seton Shows Depth in Regular Season Opener

Last Saturday, Seton Swimming challenged a number of DAC conference opponents, and without many of our top swimmers present, showed our deep our team has become over the past few years.  We’ve won the conference title the last 15 years in a row, and if Saturday’s meet is any indication, that streak is not likely to be broken any time soon.

The final scores for this week turned out like this:

Boys

Seton     214                    Notre Dame Academy            57

Seton     222                             Highland School            50

Seton     224                    Richmond Christian     34

Seton     221                    Quantico High School   34

Seton     225                    Wakefield                       24

Seton     218                    Wakefield Country Day          23

Girls

Seton     192                    Wakefield                       67

Seton     204                   Notre Dame Academy  60

Seton     211                     Highland School            31

Seton     219                    Quantico                         30

Seton     217                    Richmond Christian     14

Seton     212                    Wakefield Country Day          14

Current Members of the Post Season Championship Teams

In anticipation of the championship season, we’re already starting to see who is going to be on our State and National Catholic Teams.  Both of these meet required participants to meet a specific qualified times, and there is still plenty of time for our swimmers to reach those times.

Here are the championship teams as they stand right now:

National Catholic Team	State Team
·        Jameson Hill ·        Connor Cook ·        Catfish Dunn ·        David Basinger ·        Daniel Koehr ·        Carolyn Claybrooks ·        Lauren Donohoe ·        Alex Doonis ·        Rachel Lambrecht ·        Cat Rogers ·        Laura Talbott ·        Bridget Wunderly	·        Jameson Hill ·        Connor Cook ·        Catfish Dunn ·        David Basinger ·        Daniel Koehr ·        Michael Hill ·        Patrick Kenna (Diving – so far!) ·        Carolyn Claybrooks ·        Lauren Donohoe ·        Alex Doonis ·        Rachel Lambrecht ·        Cat Rogers ·        Laura Talbott ·        Bridget Wunderly

Congratulations to these 14 swimmers!  A detailed report detailing the events in which everyone qualified is under Meet & Team Information.

Breakout Performances

With such weak competition, it was sometimes hard for our swimmers to have truly breakout performances, but I couldn’t help getting excited about a couple that I wouldn’t have believed had I not been there myself:

• Brendan Koehr broke into the upper tier of Seton swimmers with three incredible Personal Records in the freestyle events. First, Brendan cut almost 10 seconds from his best time in 200 Free – most of it in the first 50 ;-).  Then, 45 minutes later, he totally blew out 100 Free, cutting 4.88 seconds to go 57.42.  We’re talking about an experienced swimmer who had never broken 1:00 before dropping almost 5 seconds!  It now appears that Brendan, a junior, has a shot repeat a feat accomplished by his two older brothers – beat his mother’s best 100 Free time from high school of 55.6.  (That was so long ago, back in 1979, that stopwatches had a second hand so you couldn’t time to the one-hundredth of a second ;-)).  But Brendan wasn’t done yet.  Leading off the 200 Free relay, Brendan hung close to his brother Daniel for the 50 yard sprint and cut 1.88 seconds from his best time in 50 Free, going 25.42!  That was another huge drop.  So congratulations Brendan for a great meet.  If I gave out a swimmer of the meet award, you would have definitely earned it!
• David Lambrecht, now a freshman, also had a breakout meet. David has improved so much in practice, that I really wanted to see what he would do in the 200 and 500 Free.  Well how about a 15.22 second improvement in the 200 and a 16.93 second improvement in the 500?  David also cut .72 seconds from his best time in 50 Free leading off a relay.  Saturday was quite a day for David, and I look forward to the continued improvement!
• It was also fun to recognize Daniela Sinner during the meet. Daniela is a senior who will be having knee surgery this Friday.  That means that Saturday was Daniel’s last Seton meet – at least until next season’s Homecoming Meet!  Daniela celebrated with some good final swims, including a personal record in 50 backstroke leading off the relay.  Good luck with the surgery, Daniela – we’ll all be praying for you – and come back to join us on deck when you are able!

Personal Records

You didn’t have to qualify for a championship team to have a great swim.  For those of you who are new to the team, we really try to celebrate Personal Records or “PRs” since that is really the measure of excellence for a swimmer.  If you keep improving your PR, the winning starts to take care of itself.  Here are the rest of the 57 personal records established last weekend:

• David Basinger was a beast this weekend in the sprint freestyle events. He cut an amazing .76 seconds from his 50 Free and .52 seconds from his 100 Free to establish himself as the 2^nd and 3^rd fastest, respectively, sprint freestyler on the team.  His starts were awesome!
• Lucy Bennett is back after a year hiatus with mono, and she is stronger than ever. She cut 16.23 seconds from her 500 Free PR and 2.79 seconds from her 200 Free PR.  I’m really looking forward to seeing where she is in Fly since we’ve been working on it so much in practice lately.
• Kevin Bliss has also gotten physically stronger, and it really showed with his 2.38 second PR in 100 Free and his 3.40 second PR in 100 Breaststroke. Keep concentrating on that stroke technique Kevin, and we’ll break a minute in 100 Free this season!
• Monica Byers always works hard in practice on both her conditioning and her stroke technique so I wasn’t surprised to see her cut almost 15 seconds from her 500 Free PR.
• Connor Cook cut another .15 seconds from his 50 Free PR.
• I enjoyed seeing Jack Corkery cut 2.81 seconds from his 50 Back PR leading off a medley relay and 3.25 seconds from his 50 Free PR. Those are big drops for such a short distance race!
• Nice work Judith Cummings! She lowered her PR in 200 Free by 2.03 seconds
• Alex Doonis joined us while between sessions at a big USA Swimming meet in Warrenton. Not only was she able to knock down 4 first place finishes for us, she also cut her 100 Fly PR by .71 second – and that was after I told her she could cruise it so it wouldn’t impact her 1^st place seed in the 50 Free finals later that evening!
• It sure is great having the Fusco’s at Seton – I guess there’s something about an Irish Brogue that makes me smile. And Emilia and Sofia Fusco’s swimming this weekend also made me smile.  Emilia cut 2.47 seconds from her 100 Breaststroke PR and .13 seconds from her 50 Free PR.  Younger sister Sophia cut 1.13 seconds from her 50 Free PR – and Sophia did it while not feeling well.
• Jack Geiran had a nice meet with PRs in 50 Free (by 2.91 seconds!) and 100 Free (by 4.76 seconds!). That stroke technique is really improving with Coach Smith!
• Michael Hill, fresh off of his state qualifying Breaststroke performance at Time Trials, wanted to try to improve his freestyle times, and he succeeded, cutting .56 seconds from his 50 Free PR and .14 seconds from his 100 Free PR.
• Joseph Kenna is going to be a great swimmer, and I’ve decided on his behalf (very nice of me, I know) that he is going to be a great butterflier. Fortunately, he played along and cut 7.22 seconds from his 100 Fly PR after some significant stroke technique improvements in practice the previous week.  He also cut 2.63 seconds in 100 Back.  Size 16 feet can be pretty useful for a swimmer!
• Patrick Kenna has also been working on the finesse aspect of butterfly rather than just using his significant strength to power through the water. Patrick saw an even greater improvement than his younger brother, cutting 13.70 seconds from his 100 Fly PR.  I know how much Patrick loves Fly, so he’s probably feeling lucky that 100 Fly falls right between 50 and 100 Free in the order of events for high school swimming 😉
• Shannon Kerns really seems motivated to improve this season, so it was great to see her cut 14.10 seconds from her 200 Free PR last weekend.
• Patrick Koehr had a huge PR in 50 Back leading off a medley relay. Fortunately for us coaches, Patrick is one of those swimmers that can swim all four strokes equally well.
• Does anyone do the stroke drills better than Emily Lowell? Well her good technique yielded another 2 PRs, one in 100 Free (by 1.09 seconds) and another in 100 Back (by 1.49 seconds).
• Hannah Lowell always asks to do the hardest events – gotta love that. And it is easy for me to put her in them since she always seems to improve.  On Saturday, Hannah cut another 7.41 seconds from her 200 Free PR and another 5.48 seconds from her 500 Free PR.
• Monica “Belle” Mosimann cut 1.44 seconds from her 50 Back PR leading off a medley relay. We’ll have to get her to sing between sets so she can get ready for her new lead role in “Beauty and the Beast”.  Congratulations Monica!
• 7th grader Paul Mosimann is showing some huge improvements already. He cut 5.10 seconds from his 50 Free PR on Saturday!
• Timmy Murphy, a member of the Fab 14s (boys class of 2014), continues to get faster. This time he cut another 1.14 seconds from his 50 Free PR (28.13) and another .79 seconds from his 100 Free PR (1:03.12).  Those are pretty good times for an 8^th
• Peter Quinan, you really did well this past weekend. 15 seconds in 50 Free and 3.46 seconds in 100 Breaststroke are significant improvements!
• Jonathan “Bucket” Rosato (don’t get mad at me Mary Beth) showed that he can step up and score for us with a 4 second improvement in his 200 IM. Jonathan also took a second place in 100 Breaststroke.
• Ali Salas lowered her 50 Back PR by 1.29 seconds leading off a medley relay
• Joe Scheetz was a flash in the water during that 50 Free, swimming it 1.84 seconds faster than ever before.
• Welcome to the team Fiona Seoh. You had a great swim in the 50 Free, improving your time over just a few weeks ago by 2.18 seconds!
• 8^th grader Jamie Smith is going to be awesome for us – in fact, he is already one of our leading scorers! And his 9.01 second PR in 200 Free and his 4.89 second PR in 100 Fly just show that he has only just begun to get fast.
• Jamie’s father, Coach Smith, certainly is getting some results with 7^th grader Jude Van de Voorde! Jude cut 3.15 seconds from his 50 Free PR and 4.23 seconds from his 100 Breast PR.  Hey Jude (sorry, couldn’t resist), make sure you bring all of your older siblings to the Homecoming Meet on Saturday.
• Matthew Verry worked on his Fly technique this week and the results showed it. He cut 5.80 seconds from his 100 Fly PR.  He also cut 1.66 seconds in 100 Breaststroke and 1.74 seconds in his 50 Free PR leading off a relay.  I know that his training in Coach Lowell’s lanes is going to result in many more PRs this season.
• Teresa Verry had a nice swim in 100 Breaststroke, cutting 2.39 seconds from her PR. After watching her during our work on breaststroke in practice this week, I suspect she has more PRs in her future this event.  She also cut 1.29 seconds from her 50 Free PR leading off a relay.
• Bernadette Wunderly cut another .07 seconds in 50 Free.
• Sarah Zapiain took second overall in 100 Fly and lowered her PR by 1.30 seconds in the process.

Other Great Performances

There were a lot of other great swims this past weekend also:

• New swimmer, freshman Luke Marrazzo, had to miss time trials, so I really didn’t know what he could do. That is no longer a problem, because he really showed me a lot on Saturday.  I was very excited to see his head remain mostly quiet (coach-speak for “still”) and to see his 100 Free time display on the big board – 1:05.00.  Because I didn’t have a baseline time, I can’t count it as a PR, but I guarantee that Luke is much faster than he was 4 weeks ago!  Luke also had a nice swim in 100 Back
• Coach Kosten told me that I absolutely had to give 7th grader Sally Marrazzo a shot at 100 Backstroke because he believed she has a lot of potential in that event. After watching her swim, I think I agree with him.  I can’t wait to see how fast she can get as she improves her core body strength with our dry-land training.
• 8^th grader Patrick Koehr made his presence known on Saturday by winning the 500 Free event outright (he lapped most of the other swimmers) and scoring 8 points for Seton in the process. Paddy also placed 3^rd overall in the difficult 200 IM.  I guess we’re not allowed to recruit at Seton, so the mothers of Seton are just going to have to make our future teams themselves.
• Jamie Smith got a chance to face-off against an old Linton Hall rival in the 200 Free on Saturday, and he won by 8.5 seconds. I think the tide has turned to Jamie’s favor on this one forever.
• In the 200 Free, Michael Collins did exactly what you are supposed to do when you goggles come off – keep swimming, and never stop to fix them.
• Coach Lowell tells me that Jonathan Rosato is really working hard in practice – and now I saw that he was doing butterfly correctly last Saturday. It is fun to improve, and I think that Jonathan is starting to have a lot of fun.  Jonathan also had a great race in 100 Breaststroke versus Andrew Minarik.  Both of them swam very well, but unfortunately for Andrew, the race was not 35 Breaststroke.  I know that this little rivalry is far from over.
• James Mosimann learned how to swim butterfly last week, and he did a very nice job in 100 Fly on Saturday.
• Pat Hilleary joined us a little late this year, but he’s already showing that he can improve. Pat finished a continuous 100 Freestyle for the first time in his life last Saturday.  I’ll be looking forward to the day when Pat swims the 500 for us.  I’ve seen this story repeated too many times.
• Peter Rohan, Mikey Wittlinger, Ali Salas and Shannon Kerns all completed the 500 in a meet for the first time. It’s not has hard as you thought, right?
• Kevin Bliss did a nice job anchoring our “B” 200 Free relay. He was neck-and-neck with the Notre Dame “A” relay, and beat the guy on the turn.  A lot of races are won and lost on the walls – this is just the latest example of that.
• New Flash: Keeley Cook Kicked!  It was a great thing to see loads of white water behind Keeley Cook during her leg of the 200 Free relay.
• Did you see Joe Scheetz go 12 meters underwater off of his start in 100 Backstroke? I say 12, instead of 20 because that is the max you can go without getting disqualified.  I didn’t know that the 12 meter rule would be an issue for Joe – way to go!
• Sarah Heim had a very nice start and turn in 100 Breaststroke. We’ve been working on Breaststroke a lot this week, so I’m really looking forward to the next time she swims it.

Planning for the Rest of the Calendar Year

First of all, we have a great new addition to the Seton Swimming coaching staff – Mr. Shannon McGurk.  I was very excited to see him on deck, not just because of his obvious enthusiasm, but because he is the father of 10 with 8 kids younger than his daughter Sarah.  That means he might have to be around as long as me!  So please take the opportunity to thank Coach McGurk for volunteering to help us on deck.

And I’d also like to thank Mr. John Murphy and Mr. Chris Collins for stepping into the breach when we realized that we did not do a very good job of accounting for the fact that most of our key parent volunteers were out of town with their kids at a USA Swimming meet in Baltimore.  Ooops.  You guys did a great job pulling it all together on short notice!

Now for what’s going on the next couple of weeks.  On Saturday, we have our biggest regular season meet of the year, our annual Homecoming Meet.  Please let all of your siblings and friends who used to swim on the team that they should come – and tell them to bring their suits!  We’ll have alumni relays at the break after 50 Free.  This is also a very big meet for us.  We are swimming some top Division I teams including Collegiate, Trinity Episcopal, Paul VI and Bishop Ireton.  I think their coaches have some idea of what is about to hit them, but I hope they don’t know too much.  I think we have a legitimate shot at surprising some of these perennial State powerhouses.   I’ll be working on the entries shortly, but I’ll tell you now, we are playing to win this one.

This meet will be followed by four practices during Christmas break.  We’re going to do something different this year by holding our Christmas practices at the Jeff Rouse Aquatic Center (JRAC), which is the home of QDD.  QDD is the USA Team coached by Coach Rick Benner – a lot of Seton’s top swimmers swim there.  The pool is in Georgetown South at 9446 Taney Road, Manassas, VA 20110 near the intersection of Wellington Rd and Grant Avenue.  Coach Benner is generously allowing us to practice there for free.  And the schedule will be a bit different (see the calendar on the web site).  The schedule will also be different to allow you more sleep!

I will coach practices at JRAC on Monday and Tuesday, Dec 21st and 22nd starting at 8:45 a.m.  Because I will be out of town the week after Christmas, the captains will coach practices at JRAC on Monday and Tuesday, Dec 28th and 29th starting at 12:45 p.m.  Naturally, some assistant coaches will be there to help, but I think this is a good leadership development opportunity, so I like to do this every year.   These practices are optional for non-varsity swimmers, but I expect all Varsity swimmers to attend these Christmas practices if you are in town.  If you attend, you will receive an extra practice point.

See you all at practice on Thursday, and let’s get ready for a great meet on Saturday!

Coach Koehr