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Sports
Quite a finish : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisQuite a finish
| Two swimmers place at state finals
| by Matt Daniels
| 11/26/2009
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Karolina Wartalowicz just missed out on a state championship.
The Oswego East senior finished second to Barrington senior Emily Fogle in the 100-yard breaststroke during last Saturday's state finals at New Trier High School, but her individual effort highlighted a stellar overall weekend for the Oswego co-op swimming and diving program.
Oswego finished 18th as a team with 22 points while Rosary claimed its fourth straight state title with 177 points while New Trier (129) and Oak Park Fenwick (96) rounded out the top three teams.
"The girls did a good job," Oswego head coach Deryl Leubner said. "We raced hard and we're competitive all the way through. No terrible swims. We were just a tick or two short everywhere we went."
Wartalowicz finished with a time of 1 minute, 4.02 seconds in the 100-yard breastroke last Saturday to come through with a better time than all but one competitor - Fogle. Fogle won by nearly a second-and-a-half against Wartalowicz with a time of 1:02.64 to edge Wartalowicz for the state championship.
"Our plan was to try and go out with (Fogle)," Leubner said. "Emily Fogle is very strong, very fast (and) tends not to finish her races as well, so we thought if we could get on her hip and ride her out in the first 50, we'd have a chance to run her down the second 50."
But that ending did not pan out despite Wartalowicz's best efforts. She qualified for the finals after finishing third in last Friday's qualifying with a time of 1:04.97.
Senior Nicole Ligeza also helped Oswego last Saturday with a sixth-place finish in the 200-yard individual medley race. Ligeza came in with a time of 2:07.38 while Rosary's
Olivia Scott won the event with a time of 2:01.64.
Ligeza had to overcome some adversity this season, with missing two weeks at the start of the season after her tonsils were removed and then missing some time in the middle of the season after she hyper-extended her elbow.
"That swim was a statement to how mentally tough Nicole is," Leubner said. "For her to be out five weeks out of the 14 weeks and to step up and be top six in the state, that's all mental toughness right there."
Ligeza qualified for the finals after swimming the event in a time of 2:06.45 last Friday.
Those two races were the only two events Oswego qualified for the finals in. Junior Rebecca Hatcher finished 17th in qualifying in the 100-yard butterfly last Friday with a time of 58.37 while the 12th individual to advance swam the race in 58.07.
"She missed the finals by (three)-tenths of a second," Leubner said. "That's what the high school state meet is about. It doesn't always go to the best swimmer. There's a lot of luck involved, and she just missed it. She's a state finals caliber swimmer, she just has to control the moment a little better and race within herself. She has so much natural speed, she sometimes presses a little bit, but she'll be there (next year), no doubt about that."
Ligeza also narrowly missed the qualifying mark in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 58.19. Wartalowicz also came up short in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:08.50 while the final qualifier's time was 2:08.11.
The 200-yard medley relay team of Hatcher, Ligeza, Wartalowicz and freshman Erin Newman also missed qualifying for the finals after they swam the race in a time of 1:49.27, with the final team advancing with a time of 1:48.99.
That foursome also made up the 200-yard freestyle relay that finished in 1:41.04 while the last cut was at 1:38.47.
Sophomore Jordan Anderson finished 33rd out of 48 divers during last Friday's preliminaries with a score of 145.70 while the final diver made the finals with a score of 275.50.
"The first time you get to the state meet, it's always an eye-opening experience," Leubner said of Anderson's performance. "It usually doesn't end well. For her to get there as a sophomore, it gets us one step closer to being in the finals. She's gotten the nerves out of the way and knows what it's like. I really think she dove very well."
While Hatcher, Anderson and Newman can strive for possible return trips to next year's state finals, the careers of Ligeza and Wartalowicz are through for the Oswego co-op program. But their influence will linger on, Leubner said.
"What they've done is they've brought our program, that was on the outside looking in to where we're on the inside now," he said. "We're just behind Naperville Central, ahead of (Naperville) North, ahead of Neuqua (Valley) and ahead of a lot of the major programs in the area. They've brought us up to state-wide notoriety."
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