Ungaro excels at Zone

Staff report

BOWLING GREEN

Poland’s Gina Ungaro, 10, won the 9-10 girls 50-yard freestyle and the 9-10 girls 50-yard butterfly event at the 2010 YMCA Great Lakes Zone Championship swim meet earlier this month at Bowling Green State University.

Ungaro, swimming for the Youngstown YMCA Central Branch’s Y-Neptune swim team, swam the 50 free in 27.31. Her 50 fly was clocked at 30.67 at the meet, which was held March 19-21.

“Gina loves swimming these two races and knew she had great competition,” Y-Neptune head coach Sue Mellish said. “She is extremely focused for someone so young, but she knew what she had to do and was determined to win.”

Zone is comprised of the top YMCA swimmers from Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan and Indiana. Swimmers must meet highly competitive qualifying times in order to participate.

Ungaro had qualified in all seven events for her age group and two relays, but decided not to swim the 200 free and also opted out of the 100 individual medley, even though she was seeded second, in order to focus on the 50 free.

“Sunday afternoon, Gina did swim the 100 free, placing fourth overall with a time of 1:01.45, not 15 minutes before swimming the 50 fly,” assistant head coach Stacy Sowers said. “It was a real testament to her strength and talent that she was able to recover so quickly from that 100 free and turn around and win the fly.”

Ungaro also was part of the 9-10 girls 200-yard medley and 200 yard freestyle relays.

The Medley, consisting of Jennifer Eich swimming backstroke, Tess Emerson swimming breaststroke, Ungaro doing butterfly and Logan Kountz swimming freestyle placed 10th with a time of 2:21.31, while the same group swimming the freestyle relay came in ninth (2:04.34) overall.

Theresa Mikolay of Canfield placed high in two events at Zone.

Mikolay swam a 1:13.52 to place fourth in the 11-12 girls 100-yard breaststroke, and recorded a 33.50 to earn another fourth place finish in the 11-12 girls 50-yard breaststroke. Mikolay also was part of the fifth place finishing 11-12 girls medley relay (2:01.79) made up of Maggie Beistel on back, Mikolay swimming breast, Taylor Tofil on fly and Dani Cabrera swimming free.

The Youngstown Y-Neptune swim team qualified 34 swimmers this year for Zone with this group competing in 17 relays and 51 individual events.

Overall, the Y-Neptunes placed 25th out of 75 teams competing. Of the 42 teams having 9-10 year old boys and girls competing, the Y-Neptunes placed seventh.