Finals Preview: Ready for Launch
March 7, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
This winter so far has been one of repeat champions – be it all four during last weekend's MHSAA Cheer Finals, or in three of four divisions at the Team Wrestling Finals the week before.
Only Saline is expected to repeat as winner at an MHSAA Lower Peninsula Swimming and Diving Final this weekend. But the Hornets can become the first since Birmingham Brother Rice in 1998 to win at least four straight LP boys swimming and diving titles.
See below for team favorites and top individuals to watch at all three of this weekend's meets. Preliminaries are Friday, with championship races and diving Saturday. And if you can't attend, all three Finals will be streamed live on MHSAA.tv.
Click for lineups and seed times for all three meets.
Division 1 at Holland Aquatic Center
Team contenders: Top-ranked Saline will graduate one of the most impressive senior classes we've seen statewide in some time, and they’ll be pushing for a fourth-straight MHSAA title. The Hornets have seven top seeds – including in all three relays – plus three more entries seeded second or third. And that doesn't count senior diver Sam Blair, third last season as the top non-senior in that event at the 2012 D1 Final. Birmingham Brother Rice enters ranked No. 2 and with six entries – including two relays – seeded among the top eight in their respective events.
Saline 200 medley relay: Josh Ehrman, David Boland and Michael Bundas contributed to a Division 1 meet record of 133.95 last season, and those three with Lucas Allen have swum the race in 1:32.58 this winter. They’ll chase the all-division/class record of 1:31.94 set by Birmingham Brother Rice in 1997.
Saline 200 freestyle relay: Ehrman, Bundas, junior Matthew Sieffert and senior Adam Whitener have the top seed time of 1:25.29 and will try to make a run at the record of 1:24.34 set by Rockford a year ago.
Tabahn Afrik, Holland West Ottawa sophomore: He carries top Division 1 seeds in both the 50 freestyle (21.14) and the 100 freestyle (45.94), and is looking to make big jumps in both. He was sixth in the 100 last season and 11th in the 50.
Nick Arakelian, Livonia Stevenson junior: He’s got the top Division 1 seed times in both the 500 freestyle and 200 individual medley, 4:35.47 and 1:50:63, respectively.
David Boland, Saline senior: He’s won the D1 butterfly title the last two seasons, setting the meet record of 48.95 in 2011, and he’s got the top seed time again of 49.76. He also has the top backstroke seed time in the division, 51.05, which isn't far off the meet record of 50.8 swam in 2004. Boland also won the 200 individual medley last season.
Josh Ehrman, Saline senior: He was the brightest of a number of stars at last season’s Division 1 Final, winning the breaststroke in a D1 record time of 55.36 and also setting the D1 record in the 200 individual medley with a 1:49.34 in the prelim before finishing second in the Final to Boland. Ehrman has the top seed time in the breaststroke of 56.75 and the second best for the 200 IM of 1:51.22.
Adam Whitener, Saline senior: He’s won D1 championships in the 100 and 200 freestyles in each of the last two seasons, and could make it six individual titles for his career. Whitener has the top 200 seed time of 1:42.78, and his 100 seed time of 46.28 is second-fastest in the division.
Division 2 at Oakland University
Team contenders: Ann Arbor Pioneer moved into this division this winter, which could make things a little tougher to sort out Saturday. Birmingham Seaholm is ranked No. 1 and has 16 entries seeded among the top 16 in their respective events – including two relays and an individual entering with the second-best times. Holland and Pioneer are tied at No. 2 coming in – Holland entering with 17 top-16 seeds including six number ones, and Pioneer with 13 top-16 seeds including two number ones plus a diving contender in senior Tyler Leach.
Holland 200 medley relay: This appears to have the best chance of any relay in Division 2 to set a record. Its best time this season is 1:36.33, and the Division 2 Finals record is 1:35.32, swam in 2008.
Jackson Goethe, Midland Dow senior: The reigning D2 champion in the 50 freestyle has the third-fastest seed time this winter, 21.59. His seed time of 47.2 in the 100 freestyle is second-fastest; he finished runner-up in that race last season.
Chris Klein, Ann Arbor Pioneer senior: After posting a third-place finish in the breaststroke and a fourth in the individual medley at last season’s Division 1 Final, he’s favored to win both in Division 2 this weekend. His top breaststroke time this winter of 57.43 would approach the meet record of 57.25 swam in 2010, and he also has the top D2 seed time in the IM of 1:51.61.
Ben Martin, Midland Dow senior: The reigning champion in the 200 individual medley has the third-fastest seed time in D2 this winter of 1:54.37. He also finished seventh in the butterfly last season and has the third-seeded time in that race, 52.29.
Jeremiah Morren, Holland senior: The reigning champion in the 100 freestyle is poised to win both sprints. He has the top seed times in both — 46.77 in the 100 and 21.22 in the 50. He also finished ninth in the 200 freestyle last season.
Thomas Rathbun, Holland junior: Michigan swimming has been great to Rathbun since he moved from Iowa before this school year. He comes into this weekend with the top D2 seed times in the 200 freestyle (1:42.35) and 500 (4:37.12).
Jason Wesseling, Jenison junior: He finished second in Division 2 in the backstroke last season to Okemos’ Adam Marsh, who also is back. But Wesseling enters this weekend with the top D2 seed time in the event, 51.22, and the fourth-best of 21.62 in the 50. He also finished eighth in the 100 freestyle in 2012.
Division 3 at Eastern Michigan University
Team contenders: East Grand Rapids is hoping for its first championship since 2009, but third in six seasons, and is the No. 1-ranked team. The Pioneers have 16 entries with top-16 seeds, plus five divers. But No. 2 Bloomfield Hills Lahser should make a strong push with 15 top-16 seeds including three number ones. And No. 3 Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood also has 16 top-16 seeds.
Bloomfield Hills Lahser 200 medley relay: John Schihl, Jack Ramonat and Joe Finn also swim on the top-seeded 400 freestyle relay, but could start the Division 3 meet with a classic race as Lahser’s top-seeded time of 1:37.49 in the medley is only 18 hundredths of a second faster than that of East Grand Rapids.
Ryan Beezhold, Grand Rapids Christian senior: He finished fourth in the 50 freestyle and second in the 100 at last season’s Division 3 Final. He’s got the top D3 seed times in both races heading into this weekend — 21.7 in the 50 and 46.95 in the 100.
Parker Cook-Weeks, Holland Christian junior: The reigning Division 3 champion in the 500 freestyle has the fastest seed time in his division of 4:40.19, but perhaps more impressive is his top seed time of 142.04 in the 200 — more than three seconds faster than the field. He also finished fifth in the 200 IM in 2012.
Matt Hooper, East Grand Rapids senior: The reigning breaststroke champion after winning the race both in 2012 and 2011, he’s swam it in 58 seconds flat – which would break the current meet record, although it is the second-fastest seed time in this division. He also has the third-best seed time in the IM of 1:58.19.
Matt Liu, Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood senior – He has the second-fastest D3 seed time in the IM of 1:58.09 and also the second-fastest in the butterfly of 53.57. He finished second in both the IM and the breaststroke at the 2012 Final.
John Schihl, Bloomfield Hills Lahser junior: After finishing third in the 100 breaststroke and ninth in the 100 freestyle in Division 3 last season, he’s in line to break a meet record. His seed time in the breaststroke is 57.72, which would erase the meet record of 58.15 swam in 2008. Schihl also has the fourth-lowest seed time in the 50 of 22.17.
Henry Swett, Marshall sophomore: He’s continued to build on winning the Division 3 championship last season with a score of 435.65. He’s the favorite again this weekend.
PHOTO: Swimmers launch during a race at last season's Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final at Oakland University. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Performance: Holland Christian's Skyler Cook-Weeks
March 17, 2018
Skyler Cook-Weeks
Holland Christian senior – Swimming
Cook-Weeks capped an outstanding career at Saturday’s Lower Peninsula Division 3 Finals at Saginaw Valley State University with two more individual and two relay titles to help Holland Christian to its first MHSAA team title since 1989 and earn the Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week.”
Cook-Weeks won the 200-yard freestyle in 1:37.27 and the 500 in 4:25.84, and also swam on the victorious 200 (1:24.89) and 400 (3:04.52) freestyle relays. His individual wins and the 400 freestyle relay all set meet records. Total, he finished his high school career with four individual and three relay Finals championships. All four times from Saturday also set school records, and Cook-Weeks also tops Holland Christian’s all-time leaderboard in the 50 (20.62) and 100 (45.03) freestyles.
After following five-time Finals individual champion brother Parker Cook-Weeks through Holland Christian, Skyler also will follow Parker to Queens University (N.C.) – which is competing this weekend for a fourth straight NCAA Division II championship. Skyler plans to study business and architectural design and spends part of his Holland Christian school day in work study with an uncle’s construction company.
Coach Todd Smeenge said: “Skyler’s success has been due to a strong work ethic and drive to get faster. Skyler sets goals that are just far enough out that he has to really work hard to make those goals. He is not the biggest kid on the team, but his heart makes up for what he might lack in stature, and his stamina takes over from there. Skyler is like the energizer bunny in the pool. It's not often that a workout taxes him beyond what his body can handle. When it does, he recovers and attacks his goals again the next day. … As far as the team goes, his work ethic pushes a lot of his peers, but it is really his words of encouragement to younger athletes, guys that are trying out the sport for the first time, that is going to be missed. He isn't flashy about it, but I often see the little things he does and says on the deck at meets that encourages or positively challenges those newer or younger swimmers.”
Performance Point: “The end part was the best part,” Cook-Weeks said of Saturday’s Finals, “because that’s when we won the meet and sealed it off with the 400 free relay, and that sealed the whole thing for us to win our first championship in 20 years. … Each practice we would always push each other to be the best; even if it was warm-up we would go fast. But once we got to the main sets, that’s where we’d push each other. Even for the kids who just started out, their freshman year, we wanted to push them to be the best that they can be. … I’m happy with how it turned out. At the beginning of the season, if somebody would say, ‘You’re going to win a state championship at the end of the season,’ I would say I don’t think we would. But in the end, we got it done.”
Picked up from Parker: “After my sophomore year, I went to his DII nationals in Indianapolis, and I went there and I watched how their team interacted with each other and treated everyone. And I took that to my junior year and to my senior year, to be more interactive – help people with what they need to be helped with and be a better teammate and a better leader.”
Building faith: “I think (becoming a leader) helped me become a better person, and it helped my faith a lot because my faith when I came in as a freshman wasn’t that good. But it progressed better and better throughout the years. I got into praying before each race, and praying for others that they could do the best they could do.”
Mr. Versatile: “I’ve always been known as a distance swimmer, but I kinda developed into more of a sprinter. So I can do the 50 and 100 but I was really known for the 200, 500, 1,000 and mile. When I first swam (the mile) in the summer of 2014, I wanted to scratch out of it because I hadn’t done it before. It took forever. Once I swam the mile for the first time, I went a pretty decent time. After that I developed into a different swimmer with a lot of endurance. I want to try to take that into sprint events because that’s where I can help out the team.”
Back on dry land: “Everyone at school has probably only known me as a swimmer, like that’s all he focuses on. But when I get home I like to watch other sports and hang around with friends. … I like to watch football – I root for the Carolina Panthers.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2017-18 school year, Second Half and the Michigan Army National Guard will recognize a “Performance of the Week" from among the MHSAA's 750 member high schools.
The Michigan Army National Guard provides trained and ready forces in support of the National Military Strategy, and responds as needed to state, local, and regional emergencies to ensure peace, order, and public safety. The Guard adds value to our communities through continuous interaction. National Guard soldiers are part of the local community. Guardsmen typically train one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. This training maintains readiness when needed, be it either to defend our nation's freedom or protect lives and property of Michigan citizens during a local natural disaster.
Previous 2017-18 honorees:
March 8: Dakota Greer, Howard City Tri-County wrestling - Read
March 1: Camree' Clegg, Wayne Memorial basketball - Read
February 23: Aliah Robertson, Sault Ste. Marie swimming - Read
February 16: Austin O'Hearon, Eaton Rapids wrestling - Read
February 9: Sophia Wiard, Muskegon Oakridge basketball - Read
February 2: Brenden Tulpa, Hartland hockey - Read
January 25: Brandon Whitman, Dundee wrestling - Read
January 18: Derek Maas, Holland West Ottawa swimming - Read
January 11: Lexi Niepoth, Bellaire basketball - Read
November 30: La'Darius Jefferson, Muskegon football - Read
November 23: Ashley Turak, Farmington Hills Harrison swimming - Read
November 16: Bryce Veasley, West Bloomfield football - Read
November 9: Jose Penaloza, Holland soccer - Read
November 2: Karenna Duffey, Macomb L'Anse Creuse North cross country - Read
October 26: Anika Dy, Traverse City Central golf - Read
October 19: Andrew Zhang, Bloomfield Hills tennis - Read
October 12: Nolan Fugate, Grand Rapids Catholic Central football - Read
October 5: Marissa Ackerman, Munising tennis - Read
September 28: Minh Le, Portage Central soccer - Read
September 21: Olivia Theis, Lansing Catholic cross country - Read
September 14: Maddy Chinn, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep volleyball - Read
PHOTOS: (Top) Skyler Cook-Weeks launches during the 200-yard freestyle at the LP Division 3 Finals. (Middle) Cook-Weeks follows the line on the way to the start for the 500. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)