With his purple cap bobbing up and down in the water, it
wasn’t too hard to miss Hampshire’s lone swimmer in
Saturday’s IHSA St. Charles North sectional as he competed in
the 100-yard breaststroke.
It was even harder to miss Josh DeDina when he stepped onto the
Lane 4 starting block after that race, a representation of his
fourth-place finish in the heats that qualify swimmers for next
week’s state meet at New Trier.
DeDina’s time in the race was 1:01.28, good enough to send
the sophomore to the state meet for the first time, meaning that
purple cap will be heading with its owner to Friday’s state
prelims.
“I was close last year, just a couple of tenth’s
off,” DeDina said. “But it was pretty good for my
freshman year.”
DeDina swims for a club year-round but is allowed by the IHSA to
compete in the state series because his school does not sponsor a
team.
“It’s good that my hard work paid off and I got
recognized,” DeDina said.
DeDina plays basketball for Hampshire as well and said he made
two-item goal sheet for both sports — something he carries
with him every day with his car keys.
“My two goals for swimming were to qualify for nationals,
which I did last weekend and to qualify for the state meet,”
DeDina said. “If you aim small, you miss small and I’m
real happy right now to have done this. It’s a great
feeling.”
DeDina is friends with Kaneland’s Grant Alef, who
qualified in the 500 freestyle and set a pool record in the 100
backstroke. Last year, DeDina went to Evanston to watch the state
finals from the viewing gallery. This year, he will be on-deck as a
competitor.
“The atmosphere is ridiculous,” DeDina said.
“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s so crazy
and I’m very excited to get a chance to do it.”
South Elgin sophomore Nick Haseman knows all about the scene
on-deck at the state swim meet. He qualified in the 200 freestyle
and the 100 backstroke as a freshman. He repeated that feat on
Saturday, qualifying in those same events.
“Hopefully it will be better because I know what I’m
doing,” Haseman said. “It’s kind of cool to
represent South Elgin. I enjoy swimming a lot so I enjoy being able
to come here to swim.”
Haseman is already ahead of last year’s pace. In the state
prelims last year, he swam 1:44.46 in the 200 freestyle and 53.31
in the 100 backstroke. In this year’s sectional,
Haseman’s times were 1:43.23 in the 200 freestyle and 52.27
in the 100 backstroke.
“So many people came up to me and said ‘don’t
worry about this meet, it’s all about next week,’
” Haseman said. “So I just said ‘all right,
that’s cool.’ I enjoyed my time here and I’m
looking forward to state. I’m rested a little but the focus
is next week.”
Bartlett finished sixth in the meet but did not qualify any
swimmers for the state meet. While team coach Carl Metzke would
have loved to have taken swimmers to New Trier, he said his team
performed very well at St. Charles North.
“Every single time we had today, we dropped time —
every event,” Metzke said. “We ended on a high note and
we only graduate a handful of guys. The guys coming back know
it’s up to them. A lot of them were just getting introduced
to swimming and they’re liking it.”
Metzke said the challenge comes for those swimmers in the coming
months, to improve themselves and to be ready for the start of
practice in November for the 2011-12 season.
“They know they’re going to be swimming in the
offseason,” Metzke said. “We’re going to put in
the work to pick up where we left off today. I was really impressed
with what we saw today.”
Freshman Jacob Pawelkiewicz finished seventh in the 100
freestyle for the team’s top performance. He also swam
extremely well as the anchor to his school’s 400 freestyle
relay.
“We’re leaving here today with our heads held high
that we did something right,” Metzke said. “They know
our system works now and we want to run with it.”
