Bradley-Bourbonnais swims past Kankakee at All-City

BRADLEY – The Bradley-Bourbonnais boys swimming team hosted Kankakee on Tuesday for the All-City meet, which also coincided with senior night for the Boilermakers.

Kankakee came into the meet a bit shorthanded with some swimmers unable to make the trip across town due to illness. The Kays had just seven swimmers hit the pool as Bradley-Bourbonnais won the meet, their final one before the SouthWest Suburban Conference meet on Friday and Saturday, by a score of 133-30.

Bradley-Bourbonnais head coach Megan Dote said that the main goal for the meet was to just have fun for the seniors. In addition to achieving that goal, she said the team also continued to make some late-season progress as well.

“We saw a lot of fun, which is what we want to do for the All-City meet,” she said. “It’s our senior night, so that makes it really fun, and actually some of our boys dropped a lot of time. We might be going over our conference lineup, and that’ll be fun to reconfigure and see what we do at conference.”

For Kankakee, the All-City meet was a chance for the team to just enjoy themselves. The Kays have one more meet on Thursday at Morris before heading in to sectional on Feb. 22, and head coach MacKenzie Ganger said they are looking to finish out the season strong.

“We’ve been hit pretty hard with some sickness on top of an already difficult year, so today’s goal was to just swim,” Ganger said. “We just want to ring out the season on a high note as best we could.”

As for the results from the pool, Bradley-Bourbonnais took first place in every event except the 200-yard freestyle relay. They had a team in the lead but were missing their final swimmer, causing a disqualification and giving Kankakee the win.

Sophomore Eli Swafford picked up wins for the Boilermakers in the 50-yard freestyle (23.40) and 100-yard freestyle (51.12) while also being part of the winning team in the 200-yard medley relay (1:48.81) along with Zach Morrey, Asher Crawford and Max LaMore.

Junior Charlie Quigley won both the 200-yard freestyle (2:07.71) and 100-yard butterfly (1:07.57). Jett Baker won the 200-yard individual medley (2:21.94), Tylen Coyle won the 500-yard freestyle (5:46.13), LaMore won the 100-yard backstroke (1:08.71) and Crawford won the 100-yard breaststroke (1:11.40).

The team of Morrey, Crawford, Grant Sheely and Davide Imbriaco won the 400-yard freestyle relay for the Boilermakers with a time of 4:23.61.

For Kankakee, the team of Ethan Martin, Dylan Shepherd, Ryan Shepherd and Asher Chandler took first in that 200-yard freestyle relay with a time of 1:58.29.

Ryan Shepherd picked up a second-place finish in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 6:26.77. Dylan Shepherd placed third in the 100-yard breaststroke at 1:29.40 while Emmet Costanza placed third in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:29.04.

Ganger, now in her first season as boys head coach after just wrapping her first season with the girls, said that she has been very happy with the progress the team has shown throughout the season heading into their final meet before sectionals.

“We have a really young team, and I’m just very impressed,” she said. “They’ve had a lot of really good time drops and they’ve taken correction really well. They took on a lot really quickly and displayed a lot of maturity for being such a young team. I’m very proud of them for that.”

For Boilermaker seniors Asher Crawford, Davide Imbriaco, Josh Lamb, Zach Morrey, Grant Sheely and Charlie Shots, Tuesday was their final home meet.

They were recognized by the team after the game in a senior night ceremony, and Dote said that all of them have done a lot throughout their time with the program.

“All of them really surprised me,” she said. “They really worked through it, they worked together and put their heart and soul into it.”