Undefeated Swim Team Celebrates First Ever Championship

With pictures, pizza and plenty of smiles, Wednesday was a day for celebration for the Cranford coed varsity swim team. It was just one day after finishing their dual-meet season undefeated and nailing down the first conference title in school history.

In addition to the boys and girls divisions in the Union County Conference, a coed division was added for the first time to allow teams such as Cranford to compete on a more level playing field. The Cougars made the most of the opportunity, defeating Johnson Tuesday to finish their duel-meet season 17-0 and cop the crown.

"It's been phenomenal," said senior Tom Marra. "These guys did a great job out here. Everyone put in all their effort. We worked hard all season and I'm proud of everyone. It made it a great senior year to finish it off. I'm really happy."

"It's great," said senior Katie Pijanowski. "We had a great team this year. It's my last year swimming, so it's a great way to end the season. I won't be able to swim high school again, so going out undefeated is a good way to end things."

Junior Eric Walano is having a year of firsts, adding this title to the first county crown won by the soccer team this past fall.

"I've never had such a great time with the team, having two great seasons in a row," said Walano. "I can never give enough credit to these guys and girls. They really swam their hearts out this season. We really weren't expecting to come this far."

The Cougars went into Tuesday's meet against Johnson with the Crusaders breathing down their necks, knowing that if they lost, they'd have to share the title. The 115-55 final score put any fears to rest.

"Everybody had the butterflies going," said Walano. "We knew we had to swim our best and come out hard. It was great that we came out of a fantastic Saturday meet at the Union County Tournament. We just came through and everybody did their job."

"They're a good team. We expected a fight," said Pijanowski. "We expected them to push us a little bit. We really pulled it together. What really pushed us over the edge were our other two team members, Allison Schneider and Brian Woo."

"I was really proud of them," said Schneider, who finished third in the county in the 500 freestyle and sixth in the 200 individual medley. "We went up against some really hard teams and we pulled through at the end of the season."

"It was great feeling to beat them," said senior star Connor Harkins, who was also a member of the varsity soccer squad. "The entire team was really excited. We worked the whole season, during practice to get there and achieve that goal. It's my last year, so winning this was really big."

And how did the coaches feel?

"The victory went beyond my expectations," said Cranford head coach Barbara Kolesa. "The first time we swam them we only won by 14 points, this time we won by 60, so they truly kicked it up a notch and went all out. They wanted this even more than I did."

"The victory means a ton to the team," said assistant coach Colleen Donnelly. "For the conference championship, to go 17-0 and defeat every coed team, is just an amazing feat for us. They were pumped as anything. They swam their hearts out and one of the moms had t-shirts made up for us."

While it may be a little early, next season could be bright as well.

"We're only losing a couple of seniors, so you never know," Walano said. "We'll see what we can do in the future. It would be nice to repeat, but you just have to take it one meet at a time like we did this year."

"I think this will help us as far as keeping young people interested in swimming in Cranford," Kolesa said. "I've already had the club coaches come to me and say they had some young kids come up the past few days, asking about being on the team, so I think this will boost our program more and make us much more competitive in the future."