BARRINGTON – Huntley senior Ben Rocks was outstanding at Saturday’s Barrington Sectional.
Rocks won the 50-yard freestyle (21.45 seconds) and the 100 free (46.79) to advance in both events to next weekend’s state meet at FMC Natatorium in Westmont.
He might have been more excited, however – as was coach Jenna Gaudio – with the history-making performance of Huntley’s 200 medley relay team.
Huntley beat the qualifying standard time in the relay with a time of 1:36.16 to move on to Westmont, and Gaudio said that “it’s the first time our school has ever qualified a relay team for state.”
Rocks, Dominic Siwiec, Yehan Subasinghe and Michael Boelens, who also qualified for state individually in the 100 backstroke, were the Red Raiders’ quartet in the 200 medley, the first event of the day.
“The energy from that swim really carried us onward today,” Gaudio said, “and of course Ben winning the 50 and 100 was great as well. We’re looking forward to next weekend.”
Rocks said he “felt pretty good” coming into Saturday’s sectional.
“I had all my training done,” he said, “so I just told myself to go out and give it everything I’ve got.
“My main game plan in the 50 was to just get out as much as possible. Going off the turn, I was a little sluggish, and I’m trying to work on that for state, but the last 12 yards I just made sure I could put my head down and go for it, trying to take just one breath if I could.”
Cary-Grove co-op won the team title with 265 points, and the Trojans were the winners of the 200 medley relay (1:34.71; Drew Watson, Connor Chan, Danial Sanahurskyj, Dexter Zielinski) and the 400 free relay (3:10.39; Watson, Sanahurskyj, Zielinski and Noah Brereton.)
Chan said the 200 medley relay “definitely gave us a preview of the type of competition we were going to have today.”
Sanahurskyj won the 100 fly in the time of 47.63 and also met the state-qualifying in the 200 with his second-place finish (1:43.79), while teammate Kasparas Venslauskas (57.43) was fastest of all in the 100 breaststroke.
Venslauskas finished fourth in the 200 medley, one spot behind Watson, with both beating the state-qualifying standard. Watson also advanced to state in the 100 backstroke with his second-place finish.
Zielinski (100 free), Brereton (500 free) and Mason Gaylord (100 breast) will round out Cary-Grove’s state contingent.
Jacobs co-op’s Pavlo Komarov finished second to Rocks in the 50 free to qualify for state.
And the next step will be the advancing athletes setting their sights on FMC for the final meet of the year.
“One more week to state,” Huntley’s Rocks said, “so now we’ve just got to go out and analyze what we did well today, and what we need to work on.”
https://www.dailyherald.com/sports/20230218/boys-swimming-cary-grove-wins-barrington-sectional