Last Saturday, we had the opportunity to travel down to Woodberry Forest for a meet against two of the top Division I teams in the State, Woodberry Forest and Trinity Episcopal School. Both of these teams were outstanding so we were not particularly competitive with them, but that didn’t keep us from having 51 personal records and some truly outstanding swims.
One other moral victory was seeing 4 of Woodberry’s 8 individual pool records posted on the wall with “Seton” after their names. Kevin Koehr still has the 100 Backstroke record from 2006 and Jameson Hill has 3 freestyle records from 2010
Our meet hosts were very gracious, particularly with the problems I caused for them with our entries while I was away at the Darden Graduate School of Business. I thank them for their flexibility.
Here is what that scoreboard looked like at the conclusion of the meet:
Boys
Woodberry Forest 142 Seton 43
Trinity Episcopal 140 Seton 40
Girls
Trinity Episcopal 114 Seton 68
A New Team Record!
When I hung our record board in the Seton gym a few years ago, I did it with the idea that the times were so fast, I wouldn’t need a latter anytime soon, but Keziah Higginbottom has proven me wrong. Her score of 142.70 for six (6) dives was 21.50 points higher than her previous best and was also good enough for 1st place overall at the meet.
Congratulations Keziah! She will be competing at the first-ever National Catholic High School Diving Championship this coming weekend at Loyola University in Baltimore.
Top Performers
As I looked through the results and spoke with the other coaches, there were a number of swimmers (and divers) who really stood out:
- Joe Duran also was a stand-out in the diving competition taking 1st place overall with a personal record score of 207.40. I expect Joe to be very competitive at National Catholics where he will join Keziah to represent Seton this coming weekend.
- Julia Irving scored big for us this weekend. Her .24 second PR in 500 Free was good enough to take 3rd place overall and her .47 second PR in 200 Free was good enough for 5th Julia, a junior, has been providing some leadership in the lane with all of those fast freshman girls – looks like she’s getting some return on her efforts.
- Anna Kenna’s 100 Fly was striking. Not many 7th grade girls can swim 100 Fly in 1:10.11. That time was the result of a 4.07 second personal record. If Anna were older, she’s be on the State team with that swim (See below).
- Claire Kenna continues to be one of our team’s leading scorers, particularly in the sprints. Claire cut another .18 second in 100 Free and another .10 seconds in 50 Free to take 2nd and 3rd against some outstanding competition. Her 26.58 in 50 Free is extremely fast for a freshman girl.
- Brian Koehr continued his breakout year this past weekend with two big PRs. In 100 Back, he cut 1.81 seconds to 1:06.15, a time which is approaching the State cut and is the now the fastest time on the team by over a second. To put this improvement in perspective, at this year’s Time Trials, his 100 Back time was 1:15.24 and his best time last season was 1:24.68! He has a similar story in 50 Free after this weekend’s .46 second PR. He went 25.89 at Woodberry. At this year’s time trials, he went 28.02 and his PR last season was 29.94. Those are some very big drops to some very competitive times. Brother Kevin has been tracking Brian’s progress closely from Afghanistan.
- David Lambrecht has really made the most of his senior campaign, swimming better than I ever dreamed he could when I met him 6 years ago. He cut his 100 Free leading off the 400 Free relay by another .93 seconds to go 58.74. I remember when David was swimming 100 Free in 1:46! And in the 200 Free, he cut another .68 seconds to 2:12.96, a far cry from the 3:04.78 I saw him swim in 2009.
- Luke Marrazzo was an animal on Saturday, hitting three personal records and two new State cuts (see below). In the 200 IM, Luke cut 8.39 seconds – I remember when Luke couldn’t even swim breaststroke legally, and now he’s competitive in the IM. But it is in sprint freestyle where Luke is really making his mark. In 100 Free, he cut 1.75 seconds to go 53.38, the fastest time on the team by a fair margin. And in 50 Free, he cut .70 seconds to go 24.05, again the fastest time on the team by a fair margin.
- Alex Sinner was our high point scorer for the meet with a 1st place finish in 500 Free and a 2nd place finish in 200 IM.
Personal Records
Here are the rest of the 51 personal records that I have not already mentioned:
- Mary Camarca just continues to improve with another 2 Personal Records. In 200 Free, she lowered her PR by 5.62 seconds and in the 500 Free, she lowered her PR by .99 seconds.
- David Catabui improved yet again with a 1.17 second PR in 50 Free.
- Alex Ceol is getting toward a very competitive time in 100 Free, particularly for a 7th Another 2.60 second PR is the reason.
- Jillian Ceol must have been really awesome in the 200 Free. She took 4th place overall after a 5.52 second PR!
- Tim Costello was taking full advantage of his glide – that’s how he hit that 1.42 second personal record in 100 Breast.
- Ian Curley had another personal record in 50 Free, beating his previous best by .29 seconds.
- Kalli Dalrymple had a huge PR in 100 Breast after she cut 4.16 seconds.
- Ben Dealey hit two PRs. In 100 Back, he cut 2.27 seconds and in 50 Free, he cut .89 seconds.
- Patrick Dealey one-upped his brother with three PRs. In 100 Back, he cut 1.97 seconds, in 50 Back leading off the medley, he cut 1.15 seconds, and in 50 Free, cut .98 seconds and broke :30 for the first time!
- Joe Fioramonti continues to get faster with another .65 second PR in 50 Free
- Tyler Hoffman is going to be a good Butterflier, especially if he keeps hitting 2.62 second PRs in 100 Fly.
- Xavier Holl was just super in 100 Back, lowering his PR by an amazing 6.28 seconds.
- Joe Irving is another swimmer with incredible potential. He cut his 100 Free PR by 1.87 seconds to a time that is starting to get pretty competitive. One little noticed swim that jumped off the page to me was Joe’s Fly split in the medley relay – how about a 30.66!
- Connor Kleb was very proud of his .44 second PR in 200 Free, and he deserved to be!
- James Kosten is really getting good at this sport. At Woodberry, he had a .34 second PR in 50 Free, and broke 30 seconds for the first time!
- Mark O’Donohue has had quite a season, and his improvement continued with another PR in 50 Free leading off a relay, this time by .96 seconds.
- Paul Pechie’s nearly perfect butterfly technique resulted in another .81 second PR 100 Fly and his outstanding freestyle technique resulted in another .38 second PR in 50 Free. I think Paul has quite a future ahead of him.
- Andrew Quinan had a huge PR in 100 Back cutting 6.16 seconds. He also cut .05 seconds from his 50 Free PR
- Martin Quinan cut 5.06 seconds from his 100 Free PR – that’s a lot!
- Kimberly Rector showed once again that she can swim with the big girls – she had two 3rd place finishes on Saturday including a 2.79 second PR in 100 Fly.
- Rose Remington had a tremendous swim in 100 Free when she lowered her previous best by 2.79 seconds. Check out Rose in this week’s Arlington Catholic Herald!
- Meridyth Rosato cut .02 seconds from her 100 Breast PR
- Cris Salas had two PRs on Saturday when he cut 2.02 seconds in 200 IM and 1.28 seconds in 100 Free.
- Brendan Santschi really had a nice swim in 100 Back when he cut 3.83 seconds from his PR
- Stephen Shaw has really been pushing hard in practice which probably explains another .83 second PR in 200 Free.
- Theresa Verry set a new personal record for 6 dives with a score 28.20 points higher than her previous best.
- Mikey Wittlinger also set a new diving PR – hers was by 6.15 points.
- Vivian Zadnik had a really big PR in 100 Free, lowering her previous best by an incredible 3.67 seconds.
- Maria Zambrana somehow managed to cut 1.61 seconds in 50 Free – that’s a big drop Maria!
- Joe Zapiain hit it really big in 100 Back dropping 7.04 seconds! That is quite a drop for a swimmer of Joe’s caliber.
New Qualifiers for States
As I’ve already mentioned, Luke Marrazzo’s incredible performance resulted in State cuts in both the 50 and 100 Free, but I should probably also mention Anna Kenna.
Anna is only in 7th grade so she is ineligible for the State Championship, but she achieved two State cuts also – in 50 Free and 100 Back. In 100 Fly, she was just a few tenths of a second off the cut. We have a long history of individual State Champions including Katie Shipko, Kevin Koehr, Nevin Cook, Jameson Hill, and Alex Doonis, not to mention a girl’s 200 Free Relay a few year’s back – will Anna join the list at some point in the future?
And here are the current qualifiers for States:
Alex Sinner
- 200 IM
- 100 Fly
- 500 Free
- 200 Free
- 100 Free
- 100 Back
- 50 Free
Kimberly Rector
- 200 Free
- 500 Free
- 200 IM
- 100 Breast
Claire Kenna
- 50 Free
- 100 Free
- 100 Breast
Emily Heim
- 100 Breast
Girls 200 Medley “A”
Girls 200 Free Relay “A”
Girls 400 Free Relay “A”
Girls 400 Free Relay “B”
Joe Kosten
- 200 IM
- 100 Breast
Luke Marrazzo
- 50 Free
- 100 Free
Boys 200 Medley Relay
Boys 200 Free Relay
Boys 400 Free Relay
I’ve posted the entries for National Catholic entries on the under Meet & Team Information. You should all have a room by now. If not, it will be easiest just to call the hotel directly at (410) 685-3500 and ask from one of the rooms under “Jim Koehr”. Just change it to your own name. I’m cancelling the unclaimed rooms tomorrow (Monday, Jan 21st).
Next Weekend’s Junior Varsity Invitational
Next weekend’s meet is at the WARF in Warrenton – the same pool in which we swam Time Trials. Our warm-up will be at 1:00 p.m. so please plan on being on deck stretching with the Captains by 12:39 p.m.
This is the last meet for about half of the team since, after this weekend, I will no longer have the option to enter exhibition swimmers. The JV Invitational is open to all 7th thru 9th graders plus non-Varsity upperclassmen. I have an unusually busy schedule this coming week so I will do everything I can to make sure you know if you will be swimming in the post-season meets or not as soon as I can figure it all out.
Nice work this past weekend. See you at practice,
Coach Jim Koehr