Boardman boys, girls dominate AAC championships
Boardman boys, girls dominate AAC championships
By CHARLES GROVE
WARREN
The Boardman Spartans showed up to the All-American Conference party two years ago and have made themselves the team to beat in boys and girls swimming, capturing both championships Saturday at Warren Harding High School.
Boardman’s girls won the team title with 504 points. Canfield (406), Poland (334), Harding (212) and Jefferson (161) rounded out the top five.
Boardman’s boys won a team title with 500 points, followed by Canfield (378), Harding (267), Poland (232) and Austintown Fitch (153).
Seven meet-records were broken by the Spartans and three pool-records at Harding now belong to Boardman swimmers. Aaron DunLany set the record for the boy’s 200 yard freestyle and 500 yard freestyle; Corie Kuras set the record for the girl’s 50 yard freestyle and 100 yard freestyle; Callen Aulizia set the record for boy’s 100 yard freestyle; the team set the record for the 400 yard freestyle relay; and Dominic Mariano set the record for one-meter diving.
“This is quite a way to come into the league and the kids did really well today,” Boardman head coach Terry O’Halloran said. “We honestly didn’t know how we were going to stack up this year, but the kids worked really hard and swam fast today.”
O’Halloran attributed both his teams’ victories to strong senior leadership and a strong work ethic in practice.
“We have some very talented young men on the team that are going to be around for awhile plus some great senior leadership,” O’Halloran said. “So from that standpoint we thought our boys had a pretty good shot since we won it last year.
“On the girl’s side, we graduated some really fast girls last year, but again, we have some terrific senior leadership and the bottom line is these girls are dropping their times like crazy and they work hard in practice.”
Both O’Halloran and Kuras said their pracitce sessions — which include a program called “race pace training” — have been tapering the number of laps the team swims in practices, helping them swim their best times during meets.
“Today we were right where we needed to be at this type of meet,” Kuras said. “From here on it’s just going to get faster and I know my team can do it.”
Several other swimmers had strong showings at the meet and personal bests seemed to be popping up all around, including Harding’s Mike Miller who set a meet record for the 50 yard freestyle, clocking in at 21.48 seconds.
“It feels awesome,” Miller said. “I’ve put in the work and I’ve had my team, coach and family support me all the way, so it’s a great feeling. I like to set my goals high and today I set my goals right where I thought I would be. I got the time I wanted in the 50 and I wanted everyone else to set their goals as high as they possibly could to motivate my team.”
Others had nailbiting finishes, like Canfield’s Theresa Mikolay, who beat out Boardman’s Jenna Markovitch in the 200 yard individual medley by only seven-hundreths of a second. Mikolay, who was seeded fourth in the race, said the win, coupled with a time that beat her personal best from last season, made the moment even sweeter.
“Coming up first was a big shock when I looked at the board and the win just made the moment even more special,” Mikolay said. “I had no idea how close it was. I was in one of the outside lanes so I didn’t even know it was a close race but I heard screaming and I thought ‘It might be close.’ so I just tried to go as fast as I could.”
In the diving competition, Boardman took home the boy’s title with Dominic Mariano posting the top score of 395 while Jefferson’s Sidney O’Donnell won the girls side with a score of 530.75. Both scores were pool records at Harding.