Springfield High had enough depth to reclaim the Central State Eight Conference Boys Swimming and Diving championship on Saturday, Feb. 7 at Eisenhower Pool.
Springfield senior Riley Herr and junior teammate Oliver Havey each won an individual swimming event, while senior diver Andrew Kotner shattered the school record in the 1-meter event and captured the conference title with a score of 476.85. Behind juniors Kishan Ugrappa and Jake Tolsdorf and Herr and Havey, the Senators finished first in the 200-yard medley relay in 1 minute, 43.09 seconds.
“I’m very happy with the way it turned out,” Herr said after the meet. “I’m very happy with the way our team performed and almost everyone dropped time in everything.”
Springfield’s final tally was 402 points. Chatham Glenwood, with two sensational freshmen to go with a sophomore and a junior, placed second with 366. Normal U-High (262) took third, followed by Sacred Heart-Griffin (91), Jacksonville (74) and Southeast (32).
A week to remember
Not only did Kotner’s score of 315.20 break the six-dive school record in a quadrangular meet on Tuesday at Eisenhower, but his 11-dive mark on Saturday was just as impressive. His CS8 score snapped Springfield graduate Andrew Harmon’s score of 449.40 set from the 2017-18 season. Harmon also held the six-dive record of 292.50 from the same season.
“The record motivated me all season,” Kotner said. “I knew I had the potential in me even though I wasn’t close to it in years before. I have made a lot of improvements. There is a lot of fear in diving, and I had to build up the courage and throw new dives and put in the work.”
Kotner said he was thrilled to get the six-dive mark but still wasn’t completely sure he would get the 11-dive score during Saturday’s meet.
“After the second and third preliminary rounds, I was like, ‘I need 105 points on the last three dives,’” Kotner confessed. “I wasn’t too confident going into it, but after I had beaten the record by 20-something points, it was pretty unexpected for sure.”
As for the swimmers, Herr won the 100 breaststroke in 1:03.14. He held off a surge from Glenwood sophomore Jordan Stuenkel (1:03.69), who touched in second place. Stuenkel and Herr also had a duel in the 200 IM, won by Stuenkel in 2:04.87. Herr finished second in the IM (2:05.32) and got back into the race during the breaststroke swim before Stuenkel held on in the freestyle.
“I was sick on Tuesday, and I slowly got better,” Herr said. “My goal (in the IM) was to beat U-High (Aaden Richards) because he had the fastest seed time. But I saw Jordan and I knew I had to pick it up. I dropped about a full second on that one.”
Havey won a tight 50 freestyle race that was separated by 0.04-hundreths of a second among the top three finishers. He finished in 22.75 seconds, and Glenwood junior Kareem Zeino (22.78) placed second, followed by Springfield junior Kishan Ugrappa (22.79) for third.
Havey also had a second place showing in the 100 freestyle (50.03) and freshman Alex Myers helped the Senators by taking second in both the 200 freestyle (1:53.47) and 100 backstroke (55.73).
Present and future looking bright for Titans?
Glenwood won eight of the 12 events, mainly due to freshmen Ethan Lusk and Eli Anderson and Zeino and Stuenkel. The foursome won the 200 (1:32.10) and 400 freestyle (3:25.48) relays anchored by Anderson.
Lusk was victorious in the 200 (1:50.95) and 500 (5:11.06) freestyles, and Anderson recorded wins in the 100 freestyle (49.33) and 100 backstroke (55.30). To go along with his second-place finish in the 50 freestyle, Zieno triumphed in the 100 butterfly (55.92).
Despite finishing second as a team, Glenwood appears to have something going with its nucleus, and Lusk was gracious in his post-meet interview.
“I’ve got to thank everyone that’s been supporting me,” Lusk said. “It’s just an amazing thing that a year ago I was thinking that I don’t even want to do this and now winning here (in the 200 and 500 freestyles) is something special.”
Stuenkel said his close races pushed him to drop time, and he credited his teammates while losing just three swimming events.
“I think the team has worked really hard all year,” Stuenkel said. “It was a good run for first place, but we just couldn’t pull it out. It was a great effort by the whole team.”
Zeino, the oldest of the bunch, made The State Journal-Register All-area team last season and was a part of Glenwood’s CS8 championship last season. He gave a shoutout to the two standout freshmen while also giving praise to the rest of the team.
“Me and Jordan are the two captains this year and these two (Lusk and Anderson) stepped up big-time,” Zeino said. “They won their other events and me and Jordan didn’t, so it just shows how much they worked. Lusk puts a lot of effort in our practices, he’s probably the hardest working one, but Eli just performs when it matters. They’re both really good and being around them is really fun, and it’s a good environment.”
That said, Zeino could be envisioning a bright future for the Titans.
“I think we came into it (conference) knowing that we lacked some depth as compared to last year — it was the opposite — we had heavy depth,” Zeino continued. “But again, we had a lot of kids who had never swam coming into today. I’m pretty proud of the team. I think next year we’ll have a really good run at it.”
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Top takeaways from Springfield High boys swimming CS8 title
Reporting by Trevor Lawrence, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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