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The Chisago Lakes boys' swim team spent over 12 hours riding back and forth to Hibbing Thursday, February 21 and Saturday, February 23. The long bus rides took the Wildcats to and from the Section 4A Meet at Hibbing High School and, "It was worth every minute," said CL head coach Mark Nordby.

The Wildcat swimmers and divers left Hibbing Saturday night with four school records, several podium finishes, one All-American consideration diving score and qualified for the state meet in six events.

"This was a very fast meet with some incredible swimming and diving. Our Wildcat swimmers provided some of the fireworks for the meet that brought the Chisago Lakes fans to their feet. It was two great days of fast swimming," Nordby said.

Wildcats qualified for state in the 200 medley relay, 200 freestyle relay, 200 IM, 100 butterfly, 100 breaststroke and one meter diving.

The 200 medley relay team, Alex Lundberg, Tom McGurk, Kevin Roggemann and Andy Willhite swam very cautiously on Thursday. The team used safe relay exchanges, knowing that Saturday was the day to really crank it up. "We practiced two styles of relay exchanges - very safe ones for the prelims and then state quality type exchanges where the timing has to be perfect. The guys executed as rehearsed," the coach said.

According to Nordby, the strategy worked perfectly as the foursome went from being seeded third, over three seconds behind, to winning in Saturday's finals in a school record time of 1:42.03. The time smashed the previous record, 1:44.38, set last year. "Seeing Chisago Lakes up on top of the podium and being able to personally hang the champion ribbons around their necks was pretty special. That's a great way to start a meet," Nordby commented.

The 200 freestyle relay (Brody Heggerston, Andy Willhite, Jake Spehar and Kevin Roggemann) needed to set their sights on the qualifying time to make state. In Thursday's prelims, the team qualified for the finals by placing seventh.

Saturday's finals once again brought out Wildcat speed as the boys qualified (by time) to get to state. The relay placed fifth with a 1:34.17 time, over one-half second below the state qualifying time. "That relay was a little tougher. The top four in this section were pretty fast, so we knew that the "Q" time was important," said Nordby. "Mission accomplished on Saturday with Jake Spehar providing a great 23.19 split. They will be even faster at state and will be going for the school record of 1:33.90."

The 400 freestyle relay (Brody Heggerston - 53.31, Jake Spehar - 52.34, Ethan Karwand - 52.82, Kevin Roggemann - 52.75) broke the school record with a time of 3:31.22, placing seventh in the process. The old record was 3:33.55. Nordby said, "They missed the state cut, but what a great effort by all four guys. They each cranked out personal best splits and broke the school record."

In 32 individual swims, the Wildcats set 27 personal bests in the two days of prelims and finals. "It made all of the hard work of lifting weights, and grinding out tough practices worth it," the coach continued.

Senior Tom McGurk smashed both of his school records (in the 200 IM and the 100 breaststroke), claiming the title in each. He lowered his 200 IM record to 2:09.85 (previously 2:13.03) and his 100 breast stroke record to 1:01.84 (1:03.48). "Tom's ability to focus and get pumped up for races was on full display Saturday," Nordby commented. "He was a swimmer on a mission. He now has his sights set on state."

Kevin Roggemann qualified for state in the 100 butterfly for the second year in a row. His time of 57.36 placed him fifth and was under the qualifying time and more than one second faster than last year's time. Nordby said, "He's looking good and I think his speed will be even faster at state."

Two other Wildcats had terrific 100 fly times. Clinton LaGrander. had his best time of the year. His previous best had been over 1:10 and he swam 1:02.41 in the prelims. "Clinton shocked himself with that swim. What a great performance!" Nordby exclaimed. Also performing well in the 100 fly was David Donahue, who set a personal best of 1:03.83.

In the 100 backstroke, all four Wildcat swimmers established personal bests, "With one of those swims providing some heartache," Nordby noted. Alex Lundberg just missed state (by two tenths of a second) as he placed fifth in a personal best time of 1:00.26. The top four finishers qualified for state.

"One of the hardest parts of coaching is trying to help an athlete through disappointments. He gave his all but just missed. I look forward to seeing Alex channel this disappointment into leading off the medley at state and rising higher because of it," the coach predicted.

The other Wildcat backstrokers, David Donahue in 1:02.36 (11th), Alex Vitalis in 1:04.83 (16th) and Clinton LaGrander in 1:09.77 also swam personal bests. "David will be gunning for his brother's record next year, but he better watch out for Vitalis," Nordby commented.

John Harwell made the most of his two days of swimming by reducing his best times by several seconds. In the 200 IM, Harwell came into the season with a best time of 2:32 and swam a 2:20.51 (13th) in the finals. His breast stroke time was also impressive, going 1:06.77 and placing sixth, dropping nearly six seconds during the season.

Also doing well in the 200 IM was Andrew Jokinen, swimming his best time of 2:22.42 (16th). Besides McGurk and Harwell, two other breast strokers had good time drops Thursday as Joe Birkholz (1:19.11) and Jack Linehan (1:23.10) competed well.

In the 200 freestyle, Ethan Karwand lowered his best time to 1:58.33 (12th) on the final day of competition. He did the same in the 100 free by recording a 53.40 (13th). "As a sprinter, Ethan would use speed in the first 125 yards of the 200 and then pretty much just muscle and gut out his way through the rest. He gave everything he had for those events and scored some valuable points for us."

Also doing well in the 200 free were freshmen Ryan Smith, swimming 2:01.30 (16th) and Matt Mattson in 2:13.13, both setting personal best times. Smith also lowered his 500 freestyle time to 5:39.56. Nordby predicted, "These two guys are our future distance stars."

In the 50 free, all four CL swimmers set personal best times with Andy Willhite making finals with a 23.48 in the extremely fast sprint event. Brody Heggerston (24.17), Jake Spehar, (24.27) and Cody Gralish (24.79) all swam well, but did not make the finals. "The 50 was loaded with many of the state's fastest swimmers and just making Saturday's finals proved very difficult," the coach explained.

Gralish dropped two seconds by going 55.54 in the 100 free. "Cody did a great job of making the transition from diver to sprinter after his injury," Nordby commented

"Diving coach Lisa Willhite continued to display excellence by coaching her son, Andy, to a second place finish and a state meet qualifying effort," Nordby said. "This was some of the best overall diving I've ever seen at a section meet. Andy rose to the occasion and did his best diving ever with 402.05 points, which is above the All-American consideration point total of 400. He stepped it up several notches for this meet."

Coach Nordby concluded, "Now we focus on state. We've been talking about state since the first day of practice along with the relay records. We looked up at the record board and set a goal to break all three relay records. We have two out of three. What better way to take down the last record than at state. Our fastest swimming is yet to come."

The state meet is at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center Thursday, February 28 - Saturday, March 1. Class A diving preliminaries begin at noon Thursday. Swimming prelims begin at noon Friday and the finals of both are scheduled for Saturday, also at noon.

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