We’re only a couple weeks into the season and I’m already impressed with this group of guys.  Many of them look to be in mid-season form and the performance and effort level in practice is at an all-time high.  Everyone can hardly wait to get the competition season started and show the rest of our conference and Division III that we are the real deal!

This season we return three of the four members of our UAA record setting Medley Relay in Brian Young (Sr), Ed Wagner (Jr) and James Schlabach (Jr).  Brian, our lone NCAA qualifier last season, has his eyes set on the UAA titles in the backstrokes while looking to qualify for Nationals for a second straight year.  Ed had a breakout year last season and is a UAA title contender in the breaststrokes as is James in the 100 and 200 freestyle events.

Some other returning swimmers looking to make a big impact at conference and possibly at NCAAs include Sophomores Marius Aleksa in sprint free, Robert Vanneste in back, Nick Santoro in sprint free and breast, Paul Morimoto in distance free and IM and Erik Widestrom in fly and IM.

With 13 freshmen on the team this year, we’ll be looking to them to score a ton of points for us.  Headlining this group is butterflier and freestyler Charles Du, IM swimmer Denver Barrows, backstroker Wade Gong and sprint freestylers Justin Yu and Kevin Yang.  Adding some needed depth will be Roger Fan and Ken Feng in fly and Kevin Chen and William Yeung in breast and IM, while Alec Gazda and Alan Chen will make big contributions in the sprint free and back events.

Diving will be one of our strong points this season as school record holder Even Robinson (So) is joined by two talented freshmen divers, John Gallagher and Booby Morales.  Look for these three to be dominating the boards and scoring big points for our team every weekend.

This year we’ve got the depth and the talent to break into the top-3 of our conference and top-25 at NCAA Championships.  Look for some fast swimming at our first competition Saturday, October 24 at Wheaton College.

GO MAROONS!

-Coach Weber