Improvement In Fly Puts Gojakovic On Fast Track

A taste of success in the butterfly event just made Vanya Gojakovic hungry for more.

And the Evanston sophomore used that hunger to her advantage Saturday at the Evanston Invitational.

Racing to her best butterfly split of the season, Gojakovic put up a season best time of 2 minutes, 13.48 seconds in the 200-yard individual medley and scored a third place finish overall.

She added a fourth place in the 100 backstroke, in a time that was just off another season best, as the Wildkits settled for fourth in the team standings in the five-team field.

Ironically, the host school might have fared better in the overall standings because ETHS had top 6 finishes in every single race. But the unique invitational scoring format follows the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches scoring system that rewards points based on actual times, not places.

So Evanston’s total of 4,014 points trailed Loyola Academy (4,725), St. Charles North (4,692) and newcomer Whitney Young (4,219) in the team standings. Peoria Notre Dame (1,004) also competed.

Gojakovic’s biggest splash so far in her varsity swim career has come in the IM, no surprise since the backstroke and breaststroke are her two strongest strokes. But she shifted her focus to working on the butterfly over the last couple of weeks in practice, and with Saturday’s result, dropped her best IM time down another two seconds and drew closer to the Illinois High School Association automatic state qualifying time of 2:10.54.

Head coach Kevin Auger is confident that she’ll get there.

“Her fly was really good today in the IM,” said Auger. “That was a big jump for her. Her backstroke and breaststroke times were similar to what they have been, and her freestyle was actually slightly faster, too.

“She put up a 00 (time of 1:00.64 in a dual meet triumph over Highland Park) and she asked if she could swim the fly this week. She got excited and wanted to see if she could break a minute, and she did that last night (59.97 against Glenbrook South). That’s a lifetime best for her. When you start to have success at something, you want to see just where it will go.

“Vanya’s on a faster track now and I really think she’s ready for a breakout year. The IM is what she’s aiming at (for postseason success) and if she can get fast in all four strokes (backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle) she’ll be really fast.”

Also scoring top 6 individual finishes for the Wildkits were freshman Nina Gatchell, 4th in the 100 breaststroke (1:09.35); senior Cameron Corbett, 6th in the 200 freestyle (season best 2:02.47) and 6th in the butterfly (season best 1:01.53); junior Annika Wartowski, 5th in the 50 freestyle (25.90) and 6th in the 100 freestyle (56.92); and senior Merrill Short, 6th in the 500 freestyle (5:33.90).

Evanston’s best relay finish came in 3:45.71, good for 3rd place behind the unit of Gojakovic, Corbett, Wartowski and Georgia Stoolmaker.

“At this point in the season, we’re just thinking about moving forward, not necessarily season or lifetime bests,” Auger added. “We’re also working on turns, takeoffs and strokes and I saw progression from some of the kids in those areas. We had two DQs (disqualifications) today on a pair of false starts, so that’s something we have to work on.”