This week’s swimming notebook highlights athletes from William Tennent, CB East and Wissahickon.
National Conference
Cooper excels for Tennent - Dylan Cooper didn’t fare too well at last season’s conference championships.
This year, the William Tennent junior was determined to improve.
He exceeded his own expectations, winning the 100-yard backstroke in 55.79 on Friday night at Council Rock North.
“Last year I didn’t do too well here and I thought I could do better,” said Cooper, who also took third in the 200 freestyle in 1:48.94.
“This year, I went into it thinking that I needed to just race the clock and get my best time and not worry about where I placed.
“Thankfully I got a really good time and won the race, which was everything I wanted.”
He had been seeded third with a time of 58.72.
“I really hope this time gives me a good seed for districts and gets me into a faster heat,” he said. “I didn’t shave or taper for champs so hopefully I’ll be in a fast heat with good competition and swim an even faster time.
“I’d love to get to states this year, if only for the experience, so that my senior year I’ll know that I can get out there and I’ll have been to the meet before.”
He also was on the winning 200 freestyle relay along with Andrew Richey, Brennen Bastian and Connor Forlini. Their time of 1:28.80 is a pool record at CR North, eclipsing the previous best of 1:29.18 set by North Penn in 2005.
Cooper was also on the second place 400 freestyle relay with Richey, Ryan Leneghan and Forlini (3:19.94).
“We sat down as a team about a week before the meet and decided on our team goals for the meet,” Cooper said. “We wanted to do well as a team.
“We posted the list of our goals right up on the wall at our pool and we tried to reach every single goal that we could.”
The Panthers were third in team scoring at the meet with 334 points and finished the conference dual meet season 4-2, losing to Council Rock North and Pennsbury.
“I thought we did really well,” Cooper said.
Continental Conference
East girls flying high - The Central Bucks East girls had a standout conference championship meet. The Patriots amassed 441 points to finish in first place in team scoring, ahead of second place North Penn (434).
CB East did not accrue enough points at the championship meet to overtake North Penn, which was undefeated in dual meets, for the conference title.
“We were beyond excited,” said CB East senior captain Sarah Richards. “We were jumping around and screaming.
“Everyone swam really well. We had a lot of girls who really improved a lot and a lot who didn’t taper for the meet who swam really well, too.
“We swam Souderton in our first dual meet and they beat us. But we weren’t in as good a shape as they were because they have water polo and a lot of their girls do that.
“We really thought if we could swim them again we could beat them, so it was nice to finish ahead of them and North Penn.”
Richards and her teammates are now looking forward to the District One meet, slated for March 1-2 at La Salle University.
“We all feel really good about districts,” she said. “SOLs gave us a lot of momentum. From the first race we swam well.”
She will compete in the 200 and 500-yard freestyle events.
“I didn’t swim the 500 until champs last year,” said Richards, who was also the manager for the field hockey team. “I was a sprinter until then. But I’d been swimming the 50 a lot and my times weren’t dropping so I tried the 500 and did well.
“I’ve been working hard at it. It was a risk to change events, but it was a chance worth taking.”
A senior captain, she will swim next season at the College of New Jersey, where she plans to major in secondary education mathematics.
American Conference
Berardelli hopes to come back strong - This wasn’t the season that Megan Berardelli had envisioned.
The Wissahickon sophomore made it to the finals of last year’s District One Class AAA diving competition, finishing 13th with a score of 385.75 points.
But after qualifying for districts in the first meet of this season, a back injury that had plagued her became too much and she was forced to stop competing for the season.
“It’s been hard to not be on the boards,” she said. “I was really looking forward to this year.
“Over the summer I learned some new dives that would have been good for dual meets and I’ll have to wait longer to compete with them.”
Berardelli, the daughter of Bill and Janet Berardelli, who both swam for West Virginia on full scholarships, began, not unexpectedly, as a swimmer.
“I hated it,” she said. “I was also doing gymnastics so diving is sort of a combination of the two. I went to a diving clinic at North Penn and that’s where it clicked for me.
“My parents are very supportive of my diving. My mom has really come to love the sport. My dad isn’t as into it but he thinks it’s amazing.
“He’s been great because he knows about how much rest I should get before a meet and he knows so much about sports psychology and diving is so mental.”
She is looking forward to next year.
“I just want to get healthy and start looking at colleges,” she said. “I’m excited about the whole process. I want to see how far I can get next year.
“I want to get back to districts and hopefully states. I was diving pretty well when I had to stop but I’d rather just get better now and have this behind me.”
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