Bronco Swimmers Finish Second at MSL Meet

Sometimes athletes are forced to make a decision that won’t always mean winning now but could pay off down the road, and that was the case for Bronco swimmers at the MSL championship meet.

“We really would have loved to have won the meet today” head coach John Valentine said after Barrington’s second-place finish to Conant. “Our priority since the beginning of the season was to get ourselves a little deeper into the state meet, and our training schedule is really geared towards next weekend” at the Stevenson Sectionals.

The Broncos, who had won back to back MSL titles and sent a bevy of Broncos to last year’s state meet to see them unable to advance very far, knew heading into the MSL that it would be tough to beat MSL West champs Conant while not overextending themselves before the state series, so they made some compromises.

“We are training for the sectional meet next weekend and I think we are right on plan,” Valentine said. “Overall we swim 10 of the events at our best times.”

Barrington, who found themselves trailing Conant on the leader board after just a couple of events, were only down by 19 with three events to go, but a rash of Cougar wins to end the meet, they comfortably won first place by scoring 285 team points. The Broncos, with 255 team points, finished in the top three for nine of the 12 swimming/diving events and won three different events.

Senior Nolan Presmyk repeated as conference champion for the diving portion with his combined score of 382.25. A strong series of final dives helped push Presmyk over Conant’s John Maevski (347.9) to get Barrington on the board early.

Unfortunately Barrington would not have another swimmer stand atop the podium until later in the meet when junior Kyle Ujiiye (51.42) would win the 100-yard fly, edging out two different Conant swimmers — Alan Wojciechowski (53.80) and Martin Pozniak (54.34).

Ujiiye also would be part of Barrington’s 200-yard freestyle relay that also would finish first at the MSL championship at Barrington. Sebastian Piekarski, Tommy Clement, and Jack Strauss contributed to the first-place finish in the event as Barrington finished just under a second ahead of Conant.

Clement hopes to make another return trip downstate and the MSL meet will help as a good measuring stick, despite not having the best of starts according to Valentine.

“Tommy had a tough day; he was a little slow on the first leg of the medley relay, but brought it back strong on the 100 backstroke and then anchored our 400 free relay,” he said of his swimmer committed to the University of Indiana. “He really stepped up the second half of the meet.”

How some of the other swimmers finished the meet:

Rodney James finished third in the 200-yard freestyle and would be part of the third place 400-yard freestyle relay team with Piekarski, Clement and Chris Vega.

Jack Strauss had strong swims in the freestyle races for Barrington with a third-place finish in the 50-yard (22.17) and then completed the 100-yard in second. In both races, Alex Shozda of Conant would take the championship.

In what was becoming an unsettling trend for the Broncos as they watched Conant finish ahead in many of the races, sophomore Connor Kobida (1:03.33) would finish in third just after Conant’s Brandon Grzegorek (1:02.73) in the 100-yard breaststroke. 

Kobida also would assist with Barrington’s second-place finish in the 200-yard medley relay. Again finishing behind the Cougars, Clement, Ujiiye and Strauss would complete the race in 1:38.83.