BHS Swimmers Remain Positive And Upbeat

The Berlin boys swimming and diving team hasn’t been able to crack into the winners column as a team yet but it remains upbeat knowing the program graduated 31 swimmers over the last two seasons.

The team is currently 0-5, losing to Simsbury 91-87, Hall 100-77, Rocky Hill 94-85, Manchester 99-79 and Newington 92-83.

Leading the way for Berlin has been Dan Klotz: 100 fly, 200 free, 50 free, 100 free, Ryan Marquis: 200 free, 500 free, 50 free, Luke Switzer: 100 breaststroke, Nathan Giaccone and Jakub Cwieka: diving

“We have had some close misses of school records by Dan Klotz in the 200 free against Hall and the 100 fly against Manchester,” Berlin coach Eileen Thurston said. “Nathan Giaccone achieved a best score of 158.55 and just missing qualifying for states in diving against Newington. We still have an active streak of four straight meets of 40-plus best times (out of between 67 and 70 swims.)

“We haven’t really had any down points this season. Our biggest obstacle was that we lost 17 swimmers from last year to this year so we are a smaller team than we have been recently. The number of kids on the team is down by 19 from last year.”

Thurston noted some great improvement, most notably from Tom Drozdzowski going from not swimming butterfly to a 1:29 to a 1:19 in the 100 fly in the span of a week. Two of the second year swimmers going from not being able to swim at the beginning of last season to completing the 500 freestyle in a meet this year. The team putting in the work to achieve four straight meets with 40-plus best times.  

“This is a tough accomplishment to do twice in a week, never mind four meets in a row,” Thurston said. “Our swimmers and divers have put in a lot of work and are seeing that effort pay off.

So what is the outlook for rest of season, postseason?

“We are optimistic for the rest of the season,” she said. The team is working really hard in training and adjusting technique.  As coaches, we are looking forward to seeing what the boys can do by the end of this year.  We anticipate having an exciting division schedule in the upcoming month and a half. We have two divers who are very close to qualifying for states so we are excited for them to shoot for that during these last few meets. Overall, this team is already a different team from the group that stepped in the water the first day after Thanksgiving and we are excited to see what they end up doing at conferences and beyond.”

Berlin goes Friday night to Granby to swim against Northwest Catholic High School in a cross-division meet in the CCC.  The meet is at 8 p.m.

Thurston is assisted coaching by her son.

“For my part, it is a pleasure learning from and working with my mother,” he said. “We both bounce ideas off of each other and are both comfortable with criticism from each other (after all we've got some practice dealing with it). She has a lot of knowledge about how to deal with the whole swimmer, both in and out of the water and for a young coach, that knowledge is really helpful.  We are different coaches and have slightly different styles, but we balance each other out well and together I think we get through to our athletes effectively.”

Do you go to the meets? Do you take photos? Send them to robert.mayer@patch.com.