[ back ]
Chagrin Falls boys hang first CVC swim banner
(by Tony Lange - January 26, 2011)
Chagrin Falls boys hang first CVC swim banner
By TONY LANGE
To win the school's first Chagrin Valley Conference swimming title: check.
The Chagrin Falls boys' swim team crossed "CVC championship" off of its to-do list last Saturday after winning the 12-team meet at Hawken School's Holtrey Pool.
The team triumph was propelled by winning two of the three relay events plus four of the eight individual events, not to mention setting two meet records.
The boys were really excited and loud on the bus ride home, Beth Sonnhalter, head coach for Chagrin Falls, said. "The boys had a fabulous meet, and a lot of them dropped time, which was great and very nice to see," she said. "Not just our top kids, but we had a whole bunch of kids drop time. So it's a trickledown effect, and it was great to see the whole team put points on the board."
Beating teams like Hawken, Orange and Kenston is a great accomplishment, Sonnhalter said.
"It's nice, because we only had four boys, six boys a few years back and now having 22 boys this season and 22 who want to swim and who want to be on the top," she said. "It's really nice for them to have a banner to hang in the high school gym that says 'swimming' on it, because that will be the first one ever. It's just something that they wanted so bad."
Leading the way for the Tigers were double-event winners Davis Staley and Austin Quinn.
Staley won the 200-yard individual medley by three seconds, with a 1:59.81, and the 100 butterfly in 53.67.
Quinn won the 500 freestyle by eight seconds, with a meet record of 4:52.49, and the 100 backstroke in 56.33.
Both Staley and Quinn were members of Chagrin Falls' winning 200 medley relay and meet-record-breaking 400 freestyle relay, which swam a 3:21.32.
The main goal was to win the meet, but when the team saw how close it was to the 400 freestyle relay record, another goal became evident, Quinn said. "I think the main factor in that was just the hype of the meet," he said. "With the guys on that relay, when we're under pressure, we do really well under pressure."
Winning the meet as a team was a shock, Quinn said. "It was almost disbelief, because we never won it, and last year we didn't even get second. We got third. And to win it by like 36 points was pretty amazing."
His record-breaking 500 freestyle was a highlight of the meet, Quinn said. "It's a good feeling to set a record as only a sophomore and to have two more years to do it again," he said. "My overall goal would be to try to break a 4:40."
Quinn plans to make it back to the state meet in the 500 freestyle this year. Last season, a time of 4:57 made it to the meet in the boys' Division II. This year, he wants to place in the top five stand on the winners' podium, he said.
When Quinn swam the 500 freestyle at the CVC meet, his nearest competitor was eight seconds behind.
"It's easy to go out strong in the first half, because they're still with you, but it's hard to self-motivate during the back half of the race, and that's when you really need the competition to push you," Quinn said about the 20-length endurance race.
After the 500 freestyle, Quinn only had one race, the 200 freestyle relay, to rest before his next event, the 100 backstroke. "It was hard to recover from the 500 in such a short amount of time, and so I was pretty tired in the 100 back," Quinn said.
But that didn't stop him from winning the event by more than three seconds.
One of the closest races of the day was the first event, the 200 medley relay. Chagrin Falls touched out Hawken by 0.68 second with a 1:42.05. The two relay teams have matched up a few times this season and have had close finishes. At the Orange Invitational a couple weeks earlier, Chagrin Falls beat the Hawken team by 0.22 second with a 1:45.37.
"We saw Hawken in that relay like three times this year, and it's been close each time. It's kind of exhilarating," Quinn said. "It was a great start to the meet. That first win under the belt just gets you ready for the rest of the races."
Micah Simpson of Hawken was also a double-event winner in the meet. He won the 200 freestyle in 1:47.47 and the 100 freestyle with a 48.55.
Austin Dickey, of Kenston, broke the meet record in the 100 breastroke with a winning time of 1:00.80.
[ back ]
