2/27/2009
By James Costello Sports Writer
PLYMOUTH — Plymouth’s boys swim team will break an 18-year dry spell at state today.
Pilgrims seniors Jesse Sullivan, Josh Scott and Alex Eads and junior Riley Senter topped the rest of the Warsaw Sectional field by more than 6 seconds to qualify for the state preliminaries at the IUPUI Natatorium as 200-yard freestyle relay sectional champs Saturday, while Eads earned a dual berth with a 100-yard butterfly championship at Warsaw.
“It’s a big accomplishment,” said Scott. “We haven’t gone to state in 18 years. This is just above and beyond what I thought would happen. For us coming in as captains this year and affecting the team, it’s just unbelievable.”
“In swimming I think the goal is always to get to state,” Plymouth boys head coach Bob Garrity said. “There’s no regional, there’s no semistate. Either you get to state or you don’t; there’s no in-between. Our seniors have an opportunity to go down there, and I’m so proud of them because they’ve worked hard.”
In fact, Plymouth was originally seeded second in the 200 free relay at Warsaw behind the host Tigers, who were disqualified at the sectional prelims the preceding Thursday. Even though Warsaw didn’t compete in the race, the Pilgrims still put in a season-best 1:34.24 to out-touch runner-up Columbia City by a full 6 1/2 seconds.
“Swimming is a sport that is as much mental as it is physical and being able to swim well in a race where you are comfortably in the lead, that’s where it becomes mental,” said Garrity. “They understood what I wanted as far as swimming that relay hard and showing that they belonged there and not limping into state... They were pretty excited about it. They deserve this opportunity to be in Indy.”
Because they were rated so far in front of the field after Warsaw’s DQ, safety was the theme of the day in the sectional relay. With more competitive squads pressing them at today’s meet, the Pilgrims believe they can cut some extra time off their season-best sectional mark.
“Even though we’re ranked 32nd, all those teams are going to be really close, within a second, right there,” said Eads. “At sectional no one was even close, and we still swam as hard as we could, but we can definitely shave some more time off, especially with our exchanges. We were a little safe on those during sectional.”
Plymouth’s first boys state swim qualification in nearly two decades has been the product of much hard work, say squad members.
“It’s taken a lot of hard work. We’ve come out of practice crawling out of the pool,” said Scott. “We’ve been really working. Some of those sets have just killed us. We’ve been really trying, and we were just lucky enough to get to state this year.”
Team chemistry also helped the Pilgrims as they logged their first winning season in several years. Although he won’t be competing with them, tri-captain senior Rick Wise said he’s happy to see his co-captains Scott and Eads make the state cut in their final year with the program.
“It’s pretty sweet because all three of us have been swimming together for all four years of high school,” said Wise. “We’ve gotten pretty close. We’ve been swimming together for like nine years.”
Even if they make the top-16 cut to the finals Saturday, this weekend’s meet represents the last for Sullivan, Eads and Scott. It will be a bittersweet experience for Garrity.
“We’re going to lose a lot of sprinters next year,” he said. “Our success in the 200 free relay this year is nice, we enjoy it, but it’s coming at a price, and that is we’re graduating most of it.”
Even though they’re moving on, the Plymouth seniors say they hope they’ve help set a new standard for the program with their success this year.
“We’re setting the bar for the people coming up behind us,” Eads said. “We just hope that we can do our best and show them what should be done. Not just at the meet, but at practices. Show them what they should be doing. Not screwing around but working hard all practice and showing them that if you do that in the water during practice what you’ll do at the meets.”
Garrity also said he hopes their success is contagious with his younger swimmers.
“One of our goals is to have the sophomores and the juniors that are along to get a taste of what that’s about so that it becomes a reality for them again next year and the year after,” he said.
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