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Nearly six months after winning the school’s first-ever Boys Swimming State Championship, the Trojans have earned yet another honor. In the September issue of Swimming World Magazine, Chesterton finished runners-up to Yucaipa (Cal.) High School for the Boys high school national championship by 2.5 points (116.5-114) in the mythical meet. “When the state meet was unfolding, this was the furthest thing from our minds,” Chesterton coach Kevin Kinel said. “Once it was over and I started looking at times from across the country, I thought we had a chance.” In individual events, Chesterton’s Kyle Whitaker was the National Champion in the 200 IM with his time of 1:46.75, while the 200 Medley Relay of Whitaker, Adam Thieling, Albert Miller and Tyler Fozkos also won the national title (1:32.05). “It’s really a credit to the kids,” Kinel said. “They worked hard during the year and it’s just one more payoff. I was actually a little disappointed to be 2 1/2 points behind. We’ve cracked the top 10 once before, but never been close to second.” Swimming World even went so far as to put together heat sheets with lane assignments for the top 16 high school boys in the country. “It would really be fun if they did a National Championship Meet,” Kinel said. “They tried it about 15 years ago, but it’s just to difficult to get people there.” Chesterton’s 200 Medley Relay team would find themselves in Lane 4 with a seed time of 1:32.05 next to Hamilton Southeastern (Fishers, Ind.) and Baylor (Chattanooga, Tenn.). “The one thing I know about our kids is that they are racers,” Kinel said. “You put them up against the best and you’ll really see what they have.” Whitaker would have been in Lane 4 of the 200 IM (1:46.75) with Matt Thompson of Jesuit, Tx. (Jr., 1:46.95) and Eric Friendland of Walter Johnson, Md. (1:47.59) on either side of him. Whitaker would be the third seed in the 100 Fly swimming in Lane 3 (48.44). The top seeds would be Tom Shields of Edison, Cal. (Jr., 47.57) and Jordan Slaughter of Brentwood, Tenn. (Sr., 48.26). The 200 Free Relay of Fozkos, Thieling, Greg Franzen and Bill Bass would be in Lane 7 of the Consolation finals with their seed time of 1:24.89. The top seed, and national public school record holder, is Yucaipa with a time of 1:23.04. The 400 Free Relay of Whitaker, Miller, Franzen and Bass would find themselves in Lane 3 with their seed time of 3:04.42. Yucaipa is the top seed in 3:03.76 followed by Hamilton Southeastern of Fishers, Ind. (3:04.12). “It would be fun to see the 400 Free Relays go at it,” Kinel said. “there wasn’t much different. If we’d have really went after it rather than being careful with our starts, we might have beat that time.”
Posted 10/2/2008
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