0
0
On Tuesday, January 26th, the Northgate/Avonworth swim team successfully faced off against North Catholic’s swim team. The final score was Northgate with 149 total points and North Catholic with 92 total points. Junior Carrie Haney says, “they had really good girls but we still came out on top”, while her younger sister, Freshman Marion Haney, praises our team’s sportsmanship as “whether or not we won or lost, we always congratulated the two racers next to us”. The meet held an atmosphere of friendly competition, and there was much admiration from both teams.
While North Catholic boasted an impressive girls’ team, their boys’ team was talented but small. The smaller boys’ team had only 3 boys, and as such didn’t provide much competition for the large Northgate/Avonworth boys’ team. Junior Tucker Yovetich thinks “that even though our guys didn’t necessarily have a whole lot of competition with their smaller guys’ team, we still gave it our all as it if was a make it or break it meet like South Fayette”. Senior and Captain Brach Herzig stated that “the boys self-motivated themselves, which is how it should be, to reach better time even though there was a lack of swimmers on the other team”, and praised the girls’ team as they “stood up to the competition and killed it”.
Juniors Logan Yovetich and Anastasia Wagner achieved personal best times. Yovetich improved in the 200 IM, an event where every stroke is swum, while Wagner put up new times in the 50 and 500 freestyle. Freshman Karen Siddoway broke the school record for the 100 butterfly, and Sophomore Nick Madey qualified for the 200 freestyle. Junior Anders Ove believes that this meet was “another successful step towards our end goal”. Northgate Senior and Captain Chad Kolarik adds that “we won as a team… and we plan to go undefeated and get section champs this year.”
Head Coach Jessica Mckelvey is understandably proud of her team thus far in the season. “Team is for sure the theme of the night,” Mckelvey states, “it’s apparent [the swimmers] all care for one another like family.” She acknowledges in a post-meet speech that she’s “hard on you, but know it’s because I see how far you’ve come and I don’t want anything to stop you from getting there”. Mckelvey revealed that she took some risks for the meet as she switched up the line up, and put people in events that they don’t usually swim. To her, this meet “was as important [of] a night to me as South Fayette” as this meet proved that the Northgate/Avonworth team can win without “the right line up, or the right events, or all of our numbers.”
Many members of the team have set their sights on the next meet, including Captain Brach Herzig as he “plans to train hard for the rest of the week to prepare for another big meet against Carlynton.” The next meet is Tuesday, February 2, against the Carlynton/Bishop Canevin swim team. The meet is away, and promises to be exciting and fiercely competitive.
