Boardman senior Dave Shilling excels in and out of the pool.

Boardman senior Dave Shilling excels in and out of the pool.
By JOE SCALZO
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
YOUNGSTOWN -- The dizziness started about three years ago.
Dave Shilling, then a freshman swimmer at Boardman High School, had taken a few weeks off after the district meet before getting back into the water. But before we go any farther in this story, there's two things you should know about Shilling:
* He's been swimming since he was 8.
* He was born deaf in his right ear. His right cochlea -- a tube in your inner ear that contains nerve endings essential for hearing -- was malformed at birth.
"I never really thought much about it," he said. "I have no idea what regular people hear like, so for me, it's not a big deal."
Until his freshman year. Shilling got back into the pool that day in March, swam a few laps and immediately noticed something odd.
He was dizzy.
"I tried to keep swimming for a few days, but by the time I made my first flip turn, I couldn't keep going," he said.
He went to his doctor, who told him a virus may have upset the balance system in his middle ear. Balance problems are not uncommon for people with Shilling's condition but it usually doesn't happen until they're older. It's not overly dangerous, but it probably meant Shilling was going to have to stop swimming.
"That was pretty devastating," he said.
But he quickly moved on. He was thinking of joining the speech team, which sounded like it would be a lot of fun and much less work.
Explored options
But one of his friends told him not to give up so easily. He started exploring his options, which included going to an audiologist that worked in his doctor's office. She encouraged him to undergo some balance therapy treatments and said Shilling had two choices: He could pour chemicals into his ear canal, essentially wiping everything out, including the virus.
"That wasn't an option," he said. "I mean, it was just high school swimming. It's not like I was going to get a full scholarship to swim."
His other option was physical therapy. She gave him 10 exercises, each designed specifically to make him dizzy. He had to do them every night. Once a certain exercise stopped making him dizzy, he could stop doing it.
"It taught my brain to adjust," he said.
After a few months, Shilling got back in the pool and his comeback began.
Know this about Shilling. He's a smart kid. He's got a 4.0 grade point average and will graduate in June as one of a half dozen valedictorians at Boardman. (Boardman has about 400 seniors.) He also got a 35 on his ACT -- one of only two in his class at Boardman to score that high.
(A perfect score is 36.)
"When you consider his grades and his scores, he's probably the highest-caliber kid I've had in my six years here," said Boardman High guidance counselor Rick Smrek. "His parents were like, 'Do you think he can get a scholarship?' I was like, 'Yeah, he could probably do that.' "
Well-rounded
But he's not just smart. He's well-rounded. He's in the first violin section of the symphony and chamber orchestras. He's secretary of the Latin Club. He's president of the Math Club. ("Yeah, but that's not the most involved club," he said.) At St. Luke, he's part of a group that cooks meals for the poor (Main Meal Ministry) and is a lector and folk group member. He also is a Celebrate team member at St. Charles (seniors who put on a retreat weekend for juniors). He's in (surprise!) National Honor Society.
And, of course, he swims.
Shilling wasn't a great swimmer at first. ("Pretty terrible," he said.) But he had fun, especially at age 9 when Carlo Cordon (also an assistant coach at Boardman) took over at Applewood Swim and Tennis Club.
"They kind of trick you when you're younger," Shilling said. "When you're 8, you play games every day. When you're 10, you play games some of the days.
"After that, you're swimming year-round and it's work."
But he liked it. He started swimming with the Neptunes, a club team at the YMCA. When he was 14, while swimming in the summer for Applewood, he won his first race in, ironically, his worst stroke: the butterfly. In high school, he switched from the Neptunes to Penguin Swimming, which was coached by Greg McAtee (also an assistant at Boardman).
By then, he had found his niche: the 500-yard freestyle. He also discovered something else that year: He had bad luck at tournament time.
Disappointments
His freshman year, he got sick right before the sectional meet and ended up swimming poorly. ("I don't remember my time, but I remember I threw my goggles when I finished," he said.) His sophomore year, he got the flu the day before the district meet. He didn't swim. He didn't even go on the first day and, on the second, he chose to sit on the deck and cheer his team on.
Then, last year, he got -- are you ready for this? -- sick. Before sectionals. He was healthy enough to swim, but his times weren't good. Boardman coach Terry O'Halloran could have dropped him from the 400 freestyle relay for the district meet, but he didn't.
"I was pretty grateful for that," he said. "All I remember was thinking that if I completely tank, I'll have let the team down. There were other people who could have swam."
He didn't tank. He swam the race of his life and his relay qualified for the state meet. So, you see, there is a happy ending.
Except that this isn't the ending. Shilling has since switched to shorter distances and swam well enough at the sectional meet to qualify for districts in the 100 free and 200 free. He's also a member of the 400 freestyle relay, which has a good chance of qualifying for the state meet.
Unfortunately for Shilling, both his brothers (you guessed it) got sick this week. His mom is wiping down everything with alcohol pads and Shilling is taking medicine six times a day -- just in case.
But no matter what happens this weekend, he's got a bright future.
"He's one of the brightest kids I've ever coached," said O'Halloran. "And he's a great kid."
College choices
Shilling has full-tuition offers from Pitt and Duquesne and Case Western has offered "quite a lot of money." Next month, Notre Dame is flying him in for a four-day campus visit.
"That is a very, very special event because that means he's one of their most sought-after recruits," said Smrek. "Notre Dame is tough. I've sooner got kids into Harvard than Notre Dame."
He also applied to Yale. Just to see.
"If I got into Yale, that would be pretty tempting," he said.
Shilling still isn't sure where he'll go -- or what he'll do when he gets there. He enjoys science and math and he's leaning toward physics. He probably won't swim in college -- he's not quite good enough to compete at the Division I level -- but he's not ruling it out, either.
"Swimming's been a great, great thing for me," he said. "It's a team sport, I have a really good group of friends and it keeps me in shape amazingly well. But at the same time, I don't really know what's ahead."
It's enough to make him dizzy just thinking about it.
(You know, in a good way.)
scalzo@vindy.com