By Michael Ahearne ’14
THE ROUNDUP
The Brophy swim team is making headway towards its 25th consecutive championship with many swimmers winning medals and setting new records.
Brophy swim coach Mr. Pat O’Neill said he continues to be impressed by not only returning swimmers, but by some of the newcomers.
“In the last couple of meets, we’ve had four, five of the young kids really step up and swim fast times and it looks like we are going to have four or five kids that I didn’t expect to be players this year, to be on our state team and hopefully score at state,” Mr. O’Neill said.
Even so, Mr. O’Neill said he still continues to be amazed by what his team can accomplish, even when missing key players.
“The performance of the team has outstripped my expectations. Last weekend we went down to Tucson, and we were missing two of our fastest seniors because they were taking their SAT tests, and we still set two meet records in our relays. That’s definitely some of the younger kids stepping up,” Mr. O’Neill said.
The record setting relay swimmers were Brad Dorsey ’14, Jonas Fowler ’13, Ryan McCoy ’14, Luke Williams ’13, TJ Decker ’13 and Colby Palivathuhal ’14.
When asked about how the season has been going so far, swimmer and Co-captain Decker said it has gone pretty smoothly, and that everybody is showing best times and the team is doing well.
“We strive to be a legacy team. Not only do we just win everything, we win it and we are very humble about it. We respect every other team and that is what we want to do,” Decker said.
Along with winning the state championship, many swimmers also have personal goals that they plan on achieving.
“I strive to get best times at every meet that I swim, so at state I am definitely going to blow some times out of the water,” Decker said. “Hopefully win a few races for Brophy and bring home the 25th straight state championship.”
Other swimmers on the team are also attempting to exceed the standards set by their predecessors.
“We’ve got one individual who looks like he is going to try to break the Brophy school record for the 50 freestyle, which is held by Gary Hall Junior (’93), which he of course is a four-time Olympian,” Mr. O’Neill said.
That individual is Gabriel Espinosa ’13, who recently won four gold medals at the BCP invitational.
Editor’s Note: After The Roundup’s print deadline, the swim team won their 25th consecutive state championship.