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Canfield relay teams place second, fourth in Canton
By JOe scalzo
CANTON
Just before the biggest race of his swimming career — and his last one as a Cardinal — Canfield senior Nicholas Montalto stood in front of his teammates and delivered this message:
“I said, ‘This is it. Let’s go show these guys what we’re made of.’ ”
Shaking off a lackluster showing in Thursday’s preliminaries, the Cardinals swam a season-best time of 1:27.37 in the 200-yard freestyle relay to place second at Friday’s Division II state meet at C.T. Branin Natatorium.
“It was just a matter of doing the right thing at the right time,” said Mike Cardone. “Everything happened exactly the way we wanted it to go.”
Sandusky Perkins (1:26.15) took first but the next three spots were close, with anchor Daniel Bogen holding off Ada by three-hundredths of a second.
“I looked and saw three guys on my right and three guys on my left that were right on us,” Bogen said. “I was like, ‘I’m not going to lose to these guys.’ Just in and out of the water. No breaths. Just hope it [the outcome] comes out [well] and it did.”
About 30 minutes later, the sixth-seeded Cardinals swam another season-best in the 400 free relay (3:13.80) to place fourth.
“It’s big because we all work so hard,” Bogen said. “We’re on a bus an hour every day back and forth to practice and to balance that with school and all the other things going on outside of school is rough.”
Added Cardone, “We don’t even have a pool at our school and some of these teams recruit kids. We just had the talent at our school and ran with it.”
Sophomore Connor Brady placed ninth in the 100 butterfly and 14th in the 100 back, Montalto was 19th in the 50 free and 16th in the 100 free and Bogen was 22nd in the 100 free and 21st in the 200 free as Canfield finished ninth in the team standings.
When asked what that finish meant, Brady smiled and said, “We may be small, but we’ll come for you.
“I know that for a fact.”
Army of one
Ursuline senior John Tomko placed eighth in the 200 free to make the podium for the first time in his career. He then placed ninth in the 500 free. (The top eight swimmers from Thursday’s preliminaries advanced to the finals and earned a medal, with 9-16 swimming in the consolation finals.)
“It was appropriate because last year when I finished up the consolation finals, an interviewer said, ‘I saw you watching the last heat of the 200 finals. Wouldn’t you like to be there?’” Tomko said. “And I thought, ‘Yeah, it would be nice, but I don’t know if it’ll be there or not.’
“I already had a boundary to overcome with my height [5-foot-7] and being the only swimmer from my school, so … to be on that podium, even if I am on the lowest step down, I’m OK with that. Because I know how hard I had to work.”
When asked if he had fun, he grinned and said, “Well, as much fun as you can have with no air. I swallowed water coming off the third flip turn down there, so that wasn’t too fun. But everything else was pretty nice.”