By Wendi Reardon Price
Staff Writer
wprice@mihomepaper.com
CLARKSTON — The Lake Orion Boys Swim and Dive team opened the season with a 136-50 win over the Wolves last Thursday at Clarkston High School.
“I thought that we swam quite well,” said Ben Winn, head coach. “Coming off of last season, I knew we had a lot of returning athletes who have control and have a lot of potential, and I thought that they did their job tonight. They came out, they executed their races the way I prefer them to and they got up they raced. They were aggressive from race one all the way to the end. So I was pretty impressed with how they carried themselves in the races and after the races shaking hands.”
Winn added they have grown since last season.
“I know a lot of them put a lot of work in, whether that was training their aerobic base or working on different drills and things like that to tweak their strokes,” he said. “They came in a place where they’re comparable to last season so they have a lot of room for growth this season.”
Scoring points for the Dragons in individual events were: in the 50-yard freestyle, Cayden Womack in first place in the time of 23.06; Anderson Fokken, third, 23.97; Jack Jones, fourth, 24.94; 100-yard butterfly, Drew Bronczyk, first, 56.28; Aiden McDonald, second, 1:03.15; 100-yard freestyle, Womack, first, 51.41; Ethan Stauss, third, 53.59; Jones, fourth, 55.65; 100-yard backstroke, Aiden Perez, first, 58.53; Dylan Chandra, second, 59.99; Michael Williams, fourth, 1:06.42; 100-yard breaststroke, Stauss, first, 1:11.59; Noah Thebo, second, 1:15.74; Brian Bolvari, third, 1:18.28; 200-yard freestyle, Broncyk, first, 1:53.14; McDonald, second, 2:01.56; Chandra, third, 2:04.1; 200-yard IM, Perez, first, 2:12.69; Brady Wood, third, 2:22.35; Kristian Janevski, fourth, 2:26.97; 500-yard freestyle, Fokken, first, 5:14.49; Wood, second, 5:45.90; and Ethan Gilreath, fifth, 6:15.75.
For relays, in the 200-yard medley, the team of Perez, Thebo, Anderson Fokken and Cayden Womack finished in first place in the time of 1:48.79; and the team of Williams, Bolvari, Janevski and Stauss, third, 1:55.28.
The 200-yard freestyle relay team of Bronczyk, Womack, Jones and Wood, first place, 1:39.40; and the team of McDonald, Janevski, Gilreath and Aker Salazar, second, 1:46.03.
The 400-yard freestyle relay team of Bronczyck, Fokken, Jones and Perez in first place, 3:38.23; and the team McDonald, Wood, Chandra and Stauss, third, 3:49.74.
“Dylan really broke out,” Winn shared. “He went under a minute for the first time in the 100-yard backstroke, which he was aiming towards. Cayden in medley relay, the 50 free and 100 free really got up and raced. Drew put a lot of work in the off season and it really paid off.”
For 1-meter diving, Matthew Schwarzenberger finished in first place with 192.05 points; Tyler Mollen, third, 163.20; and Jimmy Jones, fifth, 97.75.
The Dragons opened this week against Brandon.
“We have a long season,” Winn said. “We are doing our training program, right now they’re going through a lot. We definitely started fine-tuning things. Starting in the new year working with our sprint program and then really focusing on the OAA Red League meet to be prepared and ready. We throw a lot at them and they take it into stride.”
They host Farmington on Thursday, 6 p.m. Lake Orion heads to Birmingham Seaholm to take on the Maple Leafs at 6 p.m. Jan. 9.