Photo by Ben Liu ’15 — Brophy swimmers compete in a meet earlier in the school year.
By Henry Erlandson ’16
THE ROUNDUP
The Brophy swim team came away victorious at the Skyline Aquatic Center Nov. 8, winning their 27th straight state championship and the 37th in school history.
The team scored 341 overall points, 129 more than the second place team and finished with 11 swimmers or divers who scored at the meet.
Brophy broke one state record in the 4 x 100 freestyle relay with a time of 3:03.93, led by Grady Ottomeyer ’15, Isaiah Williams ’15, Thomas Ottman ’15 and anchored by Jack Blake ’17.
Head coach Mr. Patrick O’Neill has now coached the team for nine years, and this year’s state win marks his ninth championship during his Brophy career.
“I was kind of surprised at some of the other teams that were dominant,” Mr. O’Neill said. “What happened is we had a bunch of kids work really hard in the offseason and they came back and we had a lot of kids score.”
This is also the first season for the team having its own pool after Brophy built an aquatic center on campus.
“I think having a pool on campus will help more in the future than it actually helped this year,” Mr. O’Neill said.
Most of the meets this year were held at Brophy because other teams wanted to see the new pool, so Brophy had the home-field advantage for nearly all dual meets, contributing to their undefeated season.
“The freshman class is really powerful with Mike Niezgodzki (’18), AJ Frakes (’18), and Zach Paliscak (’18), so we should have a really good future, win the next four years, and keep the Brophy dynasty going,” said Dean Boyle ’15, who raced in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle races.
Next year’s team, according to Mr. O’Neill, should expect to win state because out of twenty swimmers and divers who qualified for state, 16 of them were either juniors, sophomores or freshmen.
“These guys are pretty motivated and if they work as hard as they did last year and in the offseason then I think we should be okay,” Mr. O’Neill said.
