Finals: Another Star, Another Saline Title
March 10, 2012
YPSILANTI – Saline entered Saturday’s Division 1 Finals at Eastern Michigan University with two swimmers who had combined for six individual MHSAA championships over the past two seasons.
Juniors David Boland and Adam Whitener pushed that total to 10. But the name of junior teammate Josh Ehrman will be the one most stamped in the MHSAA record book for his performances in helping Saline to a third-straight team title.
Ehrman swam a 55.36 in the breaststroke to set an all division/class record, and set another Division 1 record with a preliminary time of 1:49.34 in the individual medley – before losing to teammate Boland in the Final. Ehrman also was a member of two record-setting relays as Saline scored a team total of 326.5 points to edge runner-up Rockford by 92.5.
“It makes me feel really good, but I couldn’t have done it without those guys. I’ve been swimming with David and Adam since I was 9 years old,” Ehrman said. “They’re two of my best friends, and that’s what makes for great competitors. We trained together year-round for seven years, and it makes us all better.
“It bodes well for next year I think. We’ll have some guys we have to replace, but we’ll try to do it.”
Total, Saline had champions in seven of 12 events. Boland, Whitener, Ehrman and senior James Fisher also teamed to break Saline’s own all-division/class record in the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 3:04.26. Ehrman, Boland, senior Tom Walls and junior Michael Bundas opened the meet with a Division 1 record 1:33.95 in the 200 medley relay.
The finish made it tough to believe that Saline did lose a meet this season, to Birmingham Seaholm when some of the Hornets were sick and others didn’t swim their best. But Ehrman said that loss clearly refocused the team – something that should continue to carry over.
“We’ve got to keep challenging them. They’ve certainly got a lot of improving to do. I think we could swim better than we did today,” Saline coach Todd Brunty said. “I’m going to go back and find a way we can get faster, find out what we’ve got to work on. In the world of swimming, all across the country and the Olympic level – which some of these guys are going to aspire to – there’s a lot of ways we can get better. We’re going to keep trying to do that as a team, and that’s the best part. It’s not just one person.”
The third relay record also fell Saturday. Rockford’s 200 freestyle relay of seniors Nick Dulak, Bryan Wasberg, sophomore Craig Wasberg and senior Eric Chisholm swam a 1:24.34 to crash the mark.
Chisholm said he was disappointed to fall short of setting the meet record in the 50 freestyle, but he still won that race in a time of 20.76. He also finished second to Whitener in the 100 freestyle.
“(My favorite was) probably breaking the record with my team on the 2(00) free relay. We all worked really hard to get it,” Chisholm said. “We’re happy. We all swam well, as best as we could on the given days. That’s all you can do.”
While Saline and Rockford were expected to shine, the most surprising of Saturday’s finishes came from Lansing Legacy senior Blake Howe. Legacy is a co-op team made up of all three Lansing public schools – Everett, Eastern and Sexton – and Howe earned its signature accomplishment by finishing ahead of reigning champion Victor Zhang of Canton to win the 100 backstroke in 50.83 seconds.
That time was only three hundredths off the Division 1 Final record. Howe also finished third in the butterfly.
“ Pulling off that third turn, I saw him and I was that much ahead, and I’m like that was it. This is the last 25 (yards) of my high school career. I’ve got to win,” Howe said. “Coach said when you do your workout, states is where you get your paycheck and you can cash that in. And I cashed it in.”
Click for full Division 1 results.
Division 2 at Holland Aquatics Center
All season, reigning champion Birmingham Seaholm was ranked No. 1 in Division 2. And all season, Dexter was No. 2.
But despite only one single-event championship – in the 200 freestyle relay – the Dreadnaughts edged Groves 320-298.5 on Saturday, with Seaholm coming in third.
Dexter did post nine top-three finishes to go with the relay win by seniors Mark Brown, John Eber, Nate Kilian and junior Brennan Maisch.
Groves – ranked No. 3 entering the postseason – had champions in five events, led by senior Scott Crosthwaite. He won the 200 freestyle in 139.47 and the 500 in 4:33.26. He also swam on the champion 400 freestyle relay and runner-up 200 freestyle relay.
Click for complete Division 2 results.
Division 3 at Oakland University
St. Joseph was ranked just No. 4 entering the postseason and had never won an MHSAA Final – finishing runner-up in both 1980 and 1968.
But in the closest of this winter’s Finals, the Bears scored 250 points to edge Grand Rapids Christian by five, East Grand Rapids by 22 and Hamilton by 36.5.
St. Joseph got wins in four events, including a pair by freshman Ben Carter in the 100 freestyle (46.67) and the 50 freestyle (21.34). His prelim 50 time of 21.05 set a Division 3 record.
Spring Lake senior Nick Zacek also won two races, the butterfly (51.52) and 200 freestyle (1:41.78).
Click for complete Division 3 results.
Click for more photos from High School Sports Scene.
Dexter Extends Finals Win Streak to 4
By
Jason Schmitt
Special for MHSAA.com
March 9, 2019
YPSILANTI – It was only fitting that Casey Dolen was the last swimmer in the pool for Dexter on Saturday at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Boys Swimming & Diving Finals at Eastern Michigan University.
He was a member of the Dreadnaughts’ 2016 championship team. And he was there in 2017 and 2018 as well.
Dolen was the first to touch the wall in the 400-yard freestyle relay, helping his team win the event and lock down the program’s fourth straight Division 2 championship. He, along with senior Niklas Eberly and sophomores Michael Baumann and Clayton Kinnard, finished in a time of 3:06.84, comfortably beating out runner-up Birmingham Groves – which finished second overall in the team standings.
“This is a great group of kids, and to send these seniors out with four in a row is really special,” said Dexter head coach Michael McHugh, whose program has won five Finals titles since the 2012 season. “That’s our goal all year, but we never take anything for granted.
“The guys really stepped up. We knew Groves was going to come out strong. Our job was to not panic, not overreact and keep doing what we were doing. We knew we had a little bit of a lead (entering Saturday), so as long as we were mistake-free, we’d be OK.”
Groves did indeed come out strong. The Falcons quartet of senior David Helton, juniors Nolan Kamoo and Jackson Gugni and senior Hunter Reilly upended Dexter’s top-seeded 200 medley relay team to start the meet. Their time of 1:34.70 was the best of the weekend and gave their team an early six-point lead over the Dreadnaughts.
But it didn’t take long for Dexter to make its move. A runner-up finish by Dolen in the 200 freestyle helped cut Groves’ lead to three points – and it seemed to get the ball rolling for the Dreadnaughts.
Kinnard’s eighth-place finish in the next race, the 200 individual medley, gave his team an eight-point lead, one which it would not relinquish the rest of the day.
Dexter finished with 239 team points, besting Groves (203) and third-place Birmingham Seaholm (181.5). Midland Dow (162.5) and Grosse Pointe South (149) rounded out the top five.
Eberly was the star of the meet for Dexter. He won both the 50 freestyle and 100 butterfly events. His 20.40 seconds in the 50 matched his preliminary time and beat runner-up Luke Lezotte of Midland Dow by a tenth of a second.
His time of 47.79 in the 100 butterfly helped him repeat in the event. Walled Lake Northern’s Zane Rosely was a distant second, with a time of 49.94.
“It was definitely a goal of mine, since I started high school, to break 47,” Eberly said. “You don’t see a lot of high schoolers do it. It really sets you up well going into college like that. I knew I could do 47.5 if I really tried. I fell a little bit short, but I’m unbelievably happy with 47.7. I think it’s a phenomenal time.”
Eberly was one of the top swimmers entering the finals and knew he needed to swim up to those high expectations if his team was to have a chance to four-peat.
“I was super happy to be able to hold my places and help the team,” he said. “My situation is definitely different than other kids’. A lot of them have to step up, climb up, maybe they’re seeded eighth or 16th and they have no place to go but up. Going into states, I have nowhere to go but down. So it really adds a lot of pressure.”
Joining Eberly as a two-event winner was Fraser junior Alex Capizzo, who was victorious in both the 200 IM and 500 freestyle, a pair of events he also won a year ago. He beat out Rosely in the IM and Walled Lake Western junior Eric Hieber in the 500.
Hieber easily won the 200 freestyle, beating out Dolen by more than 1½ seconds.
Dolen did pick up an individual title, narrowly edging Lezotte by two hundredths of a second in the 100 freestyle.
Other individual winners included Jack Hamilton of Berkley, whose time of 50.51 in the backstroke helped him beat out runner-up Ben Conroy of Gibraltar Carlson by nearly a second. And Byron Center senior Jacob Glover bested the field in the 100 breaststroke, finishing in a winning time of 56.38
Midland Dow’s Che Collin, Zach Fewkes, Hans Dehn and Lezotte swam a time of 1:25.13 to take first place in the 200 freestyle relay.
In the diving competition, Okemos junior Hunter Hollenbeck repeated as champion, scoring 462.95 points. Rochester Adams sophomore SooDong Kim and Wyandotte Roosevelt freshman Hudson Hill finished second and third, respectively, both eclipsing 400 points.
Groves, which finished third behind Dexter and Rochester Adams a year ago, is losing a few key seniors to graduation, but returns a good nucleus of athletes, which has head coach Ricky Forrest excited for what lies ahead for his team.
“(Dexter is) an experienced team, and I’ve got a lot of respect for what Mike does with his guys. Every single year, no matter where they’re at on the psych sheet, every team here knows that they’re going to bring it,” Forrest said. “We had an outstanding day during the prelims on Friday and a really good day (on Saturday). We’re going to be missing a lot of (senior) leadership and we’re going to need some boys to step up next year, but we’ve still got a really good core and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
Rochester Adams finished sixth overall with 138 points, with Gibraltar Carlson (120), Detroit U-D Jesuit (102.5), Walled Lake Western (91) and Temperance-Bedford (86.5) rounding out the top 10.
PHOTOS: (Top) Dexter senior Niklas Eberly swims the winning butterfly during Saturday’s Division 2 Finals at Eastern Michigan University. (Middle) Finishers in the 100 freestyle, including Dexter champion Casey Dolen, look to the scoreboard after their race. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)