Congratulations to the OJR Swim Team!
Take a look at the excitement of the OJR Swim Meet against Boyertown
Let's hope the OJR School Board comes to watch the last OJR Age Group Swim Meet this Saturday at 11 AM at the OJR MS Pool.
Friday, February 1, 2008
OJR HS SWIM TEAM WINS AGAINST BOYERTOWN
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OJR boys, girls swim past Bears
By Rosemarie Ross, rross@pottsmerc.com
Daniel P. Creighton/The Mercury
OJR’s Allison Schafer breaststrokes to a second-place finish in the 200 IM during Tuesday’s meet against Boyertown.
BUCKTOWN - Their swimming future is up in the air because of renovations creating an uncertainty for the pool.
But for one more glorious meet, Owen J. Roberts swept Boyertown on Tuesday, enabling the boys and girls to clinch at least a share of the Pioneer Athletic Conference swimming titles on Senior Day.
The OJR boys beat the Bears, 100-80, while the OJR girls won, 101-80. Both sides came in at 5-0. Now their is only one undefeated PAC-10 team left.
The Wildcats still have Pottsgrove on the schedule, but appear to be on their way to an undefeated season. That would give the OJR boys a perfect PAC-10 dual record since swimming joined the league six years ago.
But the ones who pulled off the big upset on this particular day were the OJR girls, and senior Marissa Gregory has been dreaming about this day for four years.
“It’s the first time the girls have ever won the PAC-10, which is very, very exciting for us,” Gregory said. “We still have Pottsgrove, but Boyertown was our biggest competition. We’ll come prepared to swim our hardest against Pottsgrove, just as we were here. Today, we had great swims from everybody. A lot of people made districts and swam personal-best times.”
Maybe because of some tapering and rest.
“We rested, we didn’t taper,” Gregory said. “Our coaches prepared us well for this meet, mentally and physically.”
Wildcats sophomore Allison Schafer has been swimming in this pool since she was 5.
“We worked so hard for this meet, it’s great we could finally do it,” she said. “They are always our biggest rival, so we kind of knew beating them is what we had to do.
“But we didn’t say that straight out at the beginning of the season. And I’m glad it happened this year before we lose our pool. It’s good that it happened in this one.
“I’m not really sure how I feel about the pool situation because we’re not sure yet what’s going to happen to it yet. But I am sure we can hold the team together.”
The Boyertown girls have dominated the league for years, until being upset for the title by Perkiomen Valley last year. They came in Tuesday undefeated, looking to reclaim that championship.
“It’s sad, but it’s not the end of the world,” said Bears senior Sara Hartman, who always gets her win, this time in the 200 free. “It’s my senior year and I wanted to win PAC-10 again. We gave it our best, but Owen J. swam awesome. A lot of them were rested and our team isn’t rested at all.”
Boyertown junior standout Shannon Draves, also got her win, taking the 100 butterfly.
“This meet was definitely the meet where our girls were the most aggressive in their races,” Draves said. “That just made the meet more exciting and more fun. We are so close, and everybody was cheering on the side, but Owen J. swam awesome.”
It was a tough loss to take, as they all are for Bears coach Linda Jones.
“It was a good meet,” she said. “We’re just still training really hard and I knew they had a few kids who were really rested a bit to get their district cuts. The only time I’ve done that for a dual meet, it ended up hurting us at districts and states and I just don’t that anymore.”
On the OJR boys side, Mitch Scherer again walked away with three wins, closing out his high school dual meet career with yet another PAC-10 championship.
“It feels beyond great, it feels awesome, a great way to end my senior year,” Scherer said. “I definitely wanted to get the PAC-10 (title) again and I felt I needed to carry the torch to do that. We pumped everybody up and we did it.
“Boyertown has a great team this year. We didn’t know what would happen, and we were going in this just knowing we had to try our best and we did it.”
And Scherer didn’t swim his specialty - the breaststroke. OJR senior Corey Schutz swam that one and won (1:00.50).
“I almost got you there,” Schutz said, who came close to Scherer’s pool record. Schutz is also an excellent soccer player on the OJR team, but swimming is his main thing.
“We were all just so excited about this meet, almost everybody swam their best times,” he said. “I was expecting to go fast, but not that fast. I was really sweating this one. Boyertown is really good. I didn’t want it to be our first loss in a dual meet, not in my senior year. So it feels really good to win a last time.”
Afterwards, the Wildcats tossed head coach Kevin Bott in the pool, fancy white dress shirt, black slacks and all. Bott and his staff build the program from the ground up.
“We always talk about what our team goals are and defending the PAC-10 title is one of our goals,” Bott said. “Each year it’s a new journey, and it takes a different way of getting there. Hats off to Boyertown, they are a strong, strong team. Going into the season we knew for us to be in a position for the boys’ league championship again we’d have to be at our very, very best.
“In the beginning of the season our girls had the mindset that we can do it, that we’re getting stronger as a team. The team spirit and the team pride on both the girls and the boys side makes each individual excel in the pool and also at practice.
“We made some sacrifices today, had some kids who were resting to try and get some extra point. Otherwise, we don’t know how things would have gone. We didn’t taper, we took a rest. We felt we needed to give our kids a bit of an edge. We’re just happy it worked out the way. Our coaching staff just took the input from the kids and it was their decision.”
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