Season Wrap Up

After what was, for me, a long week since the state meet, I am finally getting a chance to take a look at results and put a little word up here about them. I got a chance to see the official all-state lists, and the results as published here look to be accurate with one change - Rob Pagan of Charter is on the Second Team, not the Honorable Mention (yes, that does make for 16 people on the second team, and no, I don't know why they did it that way, especially since there were actually a total of 45 male swimmers named to the All-State Team).

Anyway, it looks like this year was a bit of a "record" year, with (what may be an unprecedented) 9 records set:
Boys:
Eric Materniak 200 IM 1:52.32
Tanner Kurz 50 Free 20.40
Clifton Gordon 100 Fly 49.08
Tanner Kurz 100 Back 50.29

Girls:
Charter 200 Medley Relay 1:47.37 (team of Crowder, Rechsteiner, Foreman, and Nunes)
Kaitlyn Jones 200 IM 2:00.60
Annie Nunes 100 Free 50.91
Charter 200 Free Relay 1:38.10 (team of Rechsteiner, Faull, Nunes, and Foreman)
Katie Rechsteiner 100 Breast 1:02.58

Congrats to all of the record-breakers on making this a record-breaking year.

As for the team scores, the Salesianum Boys and Charter Girls won in commanding fashion, as was pretty much expected. However, the race for second went to Charter on the boys' side, something that The News Journal didn't pick up on during the season, and DMA fell to fifth, behind St. Mark's and A.I. Now, if DMA hadn't been disqualified in their 200 Medley Relay, they probably would have been 4th, but that is part of the sport. A.I., also was missing some swimmers for various reasons, but, again, that is part of high school athletics. On the girls' side, Padua earned second place, as they had been ranked, and St. Mark's got fourth, just one back from their end-of-season ranking. Tatnall, previously not ranked, moved into third place (as to have been expected by the Delaware swimming community), and Brandywine rounded out the top 5, with pressure from Newark and Milford. Meanwhile, the end-of-season fourth place Concord team fell to 14th and A.I. (fifth at The News Journal) fell to 9th. Granted, this was a snow-shortened season, but some of the rankings this year were pretty far off. That being said, The News Journal, as most other print newspapers must be struggling at this point just to stay afloat, so the minimal coverage is almost forgivable.

On another note, I've noticed some discussion in the comments regarding high school coaches. Swimming is maybe one of the hardest sports to pick a coach to be the Coach of the Year, because so many of the All-State level swimmers never or hardly ever practice with their high school team. Except for some sprinters, most of the point-scoring swimmers train elsewhere, so to name the Sallies coach, the Charter coach, etc. to be Coach of the Year would be, in my mind, a questionable decision. Yes, they do put kids in the right events, but at the same time, this is just knowing what events your swimmers are best at a lot of times. That's not to say these coaches shouldn't get any credit - after all, they did lead their teams to high finishes at the State Meet, and they also helped countless other swimmers improve their times throughout the season with the high school practices. So, it really is an interesting decision for the Coach of the Year.

Also, there has been a lot of healthy discussion regarding the All-State selections on one of the other previous posts, and as always, suggestions are welcome to improve it. Should the power points be used? I think that it is an interesting approach, using them to attempt to compare events that ordinarily wouldn't be compared. But, I think it also has its flaws, since it does try to compare things that maybe cannot be compared. I mean, who is to say that a 1:05.40 100 Breast (the average 8th place time from 2004-2010) earns 95 points, while 22.85 50 Free (the average 8th place time from 2004-2010) earns 108, and a 50.31 in the 100 Free (same average) earns 106 points? Are Delaware breaststrokers just systematically slower than Delaware sprint freestylers? Is the power point table biased towards sprint freestylers? If we are going to use something to compare events like that, I think we need to find something better. These power points are from 1999, and don't always seem fair at that. Is there a better way? I'm not sure, but if there is, there is no reason we can't find it.

Congratulations again to everyone on a great meet and a great swim season. Check back occasionally for updates, and hopefully there will be more to come next season.