Quite frankly, there are not many instances of high school swim and dive meets being filled to the brim with spectators. Unlike football or basketball players, swimmers and divers typically compete with no one watching from the sidelines other than their fellow competitors. On the evening of February 11, however, the Germantown Indoor Swim Center was host to what many Montgomery County swimmers acknowledge as the greatest meet of the year–with a crowd to prove it.
The 2017 Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships, commonly referred to as “Metros,” were held from February 8-11, featuring some of the region’s most talented swimmers and divers. The event opened on Wednesday, February 8 with boys diving, in which junior Ian McBain placed 10th out of 40 divers after advancing through several rounds, securing an early 13 points for the RM boys.
The following day, senior Kamryn Umbel followed up on McBain’s performance, qualifying through preliminaries to semi-finals and finals to finish in third place out of 45. Her diving scores totaled 431.90 and earned 20 points for the RM girls; Umbel’s individual performance would make up 20 of the 27 total points earned by RM’s female swimmers and divers collectively over the course of the four-day meet.
Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11 consisted of the swimming portion of the meet. The top 20 finishers at preliminaries would qualify to compete in finals on Saturday evening and win the opportunity to score points for their respective teams, with places 1-10 in the “A” final and 11-20 in the “B” final. Of the girls, senior Grace Sun was the only RM swimmer to qualify, which she did in the 50-yard freestyle. Sun placed 14th overall in the event with a time of 24.89. Her seven points combined with Umbel’s 20 to put RM girls in 22nd place overall at Metros.
After suffering the loss of several key swimmers with last year’s graduating class, RM’s girls struggled to keep up with the incredible speed of Division I throughout the dual meet season. In addition, for the first time in years, they were unable to send any one of three relays to finals at Metros and finished with a total score 117 points lower than that of 2016. However, that did not in any way indicate a poor performance. “Many of the girls got best times and the relay times were some of the season’s best,” said junior Michelle Li. “Although a lot of girls left last year, we still pulled through this year and had a great season.”
Meanwhile, the boys placed fourth overall with a combined team score of 304 points. They were only behind two-year reigning champion Gonzaga, second place Churchill, and third place Georgetown Prep. While Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep had traditionally been first and second in one way or the other, RM had been hoping to fend off Churchill, who they managed to defeat at both a dual meet and Divisionals. Nevertheless, the boys put up phenomenal swims, including 17 finals qualifications, four top-three finishes, and two All-American Consideration (AAAC) times.
The first of countless notable individual swims was sophomore Connor Din’s victory in the B-final of the 200 freestyle. His time of 1:42.82 broke his own school record and would have placed sixth overall, had he competed in the A-final. Not long after, four RM boys competed in the 50 freestyle finals event: seniors Kenny Afolabi-Brown (6th), Jonathan Mendley (10th), Greg Afolabi-Brown (17th), and Matt Nguyen (20th). Nguyen later went on to win first place overall in the 100 backstroke with a time of 51.56, closely followed by teammate junior Jack Rose in third. “Winning Metros was definitely the highlight of my entire swimming career,” Nguyen said. “All my life I wanted to be able to win something, and now at the end of my career, I can finally say I did.”
As for relays, the boys 200 medley relay of Nguyen, both Afolabi-Brown brothers, and Mendley placed second, simultaneously edging out an AAAC time by just 0.1 seconds. The boys 200 freestyle relay of Mendley, the Afolabi-Browns, and senior Simon Li also swam an AAAC time and finished in third, setting a new school and county record. The third school record of the meet was broken in the 400 freestyle relay (Din, sophomore Steven Mendley, Rose, and sophomore John Clado), which finished in sixth.
Despite placing lower than they had in recent years, the RM swim and dive team left the pool with nothing but pride and high hopes for the years to come. “We fought really hard against some extremely tough teams, and it was great seeing our hard work and dedication pay off,” said freshman Joy Shi. “Our swimmers are improving so much, and even though our senior class–which is really fast–is leaving, we’ll definitely make up for it in the future.”
Links to full results:
Girls: http://pvswim.org/1617hs/2017Metros_w.]html
Boys: http://pvswim.org/1617hs/2017Metros_m.html
Featured photo by Ishaan Oberoi
