This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Sports

Cleveland Heights Swimmers Shoot for Wins, PRs

In the blur of a meet, high school swimmers race against each other — and the clock

On the basketball court or the football field or the soccer pitch, your opponent is obvious. You always want to beat the other team.

You want to do the same thing in the pool, of course, but for swimmers, opponents are less clearly defined. When you dive in, you want to touch the wall before your opponents, but you also want to touch the wall first.

That means you want to beat your own teammates.

Find out what's happening in Cleveland Heightswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

And the clock.

And that was what Stedman Smith wanted to do Tuesday night.

Find out what's happening in Cleveland Heightswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Smith is a junior on the swimming and diving team. He is tall and lean and fast, and he is getting faster. On Tuesday night, during a home dual meet against Eastlake North — the boys won 121-43 and the girls won 116-65 — Smith dived in against teammate Nick Negenborn, one of the top Cleveland Heights swimmers in the 100-meter breaststroke. Smith wanted to set a personal record and win the race.

“I don’t care who I’m going against,” Smith said afterward, smiling. “My goal every time out is to get my best time. I go out there and push myself to act like it’s just me out there. I wanted to beat him.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t have that tunnel vision, and I looked.” 

Oh, there is that one other small detail about swimming. You can see your teammates and opponents — and you can certainly hear them in the echo of the natatorium — but they are normally blurred behind goggles and fog and waves of chlorinated water. So Smith wanted to see where Negenborn was in the pool —  and that slowed him down just enough.

“They always look,” coach Jim Miller said.

Negenborn won the race in 1:11. Smith finished second in 1:14, three seconds off the pace, but also three seconds faster than he had ever swam the event.

“I knew I wasn’t going to set a PR,” Negenborn said, “and I was just worried about getting a PR for Stedman.”

That is the beauty of a midweek, midseason, non-league dual meet in the pool. The meet matters — swimmers can lower their seed times for postseason races or work on stroke mechanics in a more competitive atmosphere — but there is little on the line in terms of wins and losses.

Miller and coach Katie Blazetic knew before the first event Tuesday night that the Tiger Sharks would likely win the meet by a wide margin— the size of the teams alone gave Cleveland Heights a clear advantage — so they told their swimmers to relax and have fun. Most were swimming at least one event not on their normal schedule. 

“It gives a chance to experience a lot of different events,” Miller said, “and it gives kids a chance to PR in those events.”

Like Smith. He set that PR in the 100 breast, and also turned in an unofficial PR of 1:01.51 in the 100 free during his leg of the 400 free relay. Other swimmers —like divers Ellen Posch and Luke Boyle — dived in for multiple events and swam well.

“You let them have fun and swim events they wouldn’t normally swim,” Blazetic said. “It gives them a time and an idea of how they would place.”

There are bigger meets ahead, of course, including one this week when Cleveland Heights swim at noon Saturday at Shaker Heights. For that meet, the Tiger Sharks will return to their normal events, their normal schedule. They will swim to beat each other. They will swim to beat their opponent.

 

BOYS

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS 121

EASTLAKE NORTH 43

 200 Medley Relay: 1. Cleveland Heights (Simon Mastri, Luke Boyle, Stedman Smith, David Schellenberg), 2:12; 2.Cleveland Heights (Peter Rabias, Devin Johnson, Erik Thiem, James Johnson) 2:32.

200 Freestyle: 1. Jeremy Apple, CH, 2:02; 2. T.J. Hartman, EN, 2:17; 3. Anastas Pogace, EN, 2:17.

200 Individual Medley: 1. Mastri, CH, 2:53; 2. Thiem, CH, 3:03; 3. Schellenberg, CH, 3:04.

50 Free: 1. Hartman, EN, 0:26; 2. Stedman Smith, CH, 0:26.7; 3. D. Johnson, CH, 0:28.

100 Butterfly: 1. Dylan Hammond, EN, 1:14; 2. Schellenberg, CH, 1:26; 3. H. Hammond, CH, 1:27.

100 Free: Joe Eyerman, CH, 0:55; 2. Sean Delvalle, CH, 0:56; 3. D. Johnson, CH, 1:07.

500 Free: 1. Pogace, EN, 6:22; 2. Rabias, CH, 7:07; 3. J. Johnson, CH, 8:15.

200 Free Relay: 1. Cleveland Heights (Eyerman, Delvalle, Apple, Nick Negenborn), 1:41; 2. Eastlake North (Anthony Daykin, Hammond, Hartman, Pogace), 1:54; 3. Cleveland Heights (D. Johnson, Boyle, Thiem, H. Hammond), 1:57.

100 Backstroke: 1. Mastri, CH, 1:23; 2. Rabias, CH, 1:31; 3. Christopher Elliott, EN, 1:32.

100 Breast: 1. Negenborn, CH, 1:11; 2. Smith, CH, 1:14; 3. D. Hammond, EN, 1:26.

400 Free Relay: 1. Cleveland Heights (Eyerman, Delvalle, Apple, Negenborn), 3:48; 2. Eastlake North (Daykin, D. Hammond, Hartman, Pogace), 4:21; 3. Cleveland Heights (Rabias, Mastri, Schellenberg, Smith), 4:24.

Diving: 1. Boyle, CH.

 

GIRLS

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS 116

EASTLAKE NORTH 65

200 Medley Relay: 1. Cleveland Heights (Lillie Hall, Andrea Chan, Emma Lissemore, Diamond Jones), 2:12; 2. Eastlake North (Kameron Deiss, Reagan Meyers, Carly Spardano, Julian Tompkins), 2:14; 3. Cleveland Heights (Abbey Rinaldi, Catherine Holt, Monica Chan, Renita Brock), 2:29.

200 Freestyle: 1. Deiss, EN, 2:33; 2. Lydia Resnik, CH, 2:40; 3. Rinaldi, CH, 2:43.

200 Individual Medley: 1. A. Chan, CH, 2:32; 2. Lissemore, CH, 3:08; 3. Holt, CH, 3:12.

50 Free: 1. Meyers, EN, 0:28; 2. Jillian Tompkins, EN, 0:29; 3. Jones, CH, 0:29.

100 Butterfly: Tompkins, EN, 1:16; 2. Casandra Espenschied, CH, 1:19; 3. Lissemore, CH, 1:23.

100 Free: 1. Jones, CH, 1:06; 2. Carly Spadaro, EN, 1:07; 3. Amy Ruiz, EN, 1:09.

500 Free: 1. Espenschied, CH, 6:51; 2. Rinaldi, CH, 7:39; 3. Linnea Fox, CH, 7:40.

200 Free Relay: 1. Eastlake North (Deiss, Meyers, Spadaro, Tompkins), 1:59; 2. Cleveland Heights (Hall, Ellen Posch, Espenschied, Resnik), 2:03; 3. Eastlake North (Sarah Crick, Sara Kienzl, Ashley Killian Ruiz), 2:12.

100 Backstroke: 1. Hall, CH, 1:16; 2. Posch, CH, 1:18; 3. Deiss, EN, 1:20.

100 Breast: 1. A. Chan, CH, 1:17; 2. Holt, CH, 1:20; 3. M. Chan, CH, 1:23.

400 Free Relay: 1. Cleveland Heights (Espenschied, Posch, Jones, A. Chan), 4:33; 2. Eastlake North (Crick, Kienzl, Killian, Ruiz), 5:10; 3. Cleveland Heights (Rinaldi, Resnik, Samantha Clark, M. Chan), 5:10.

Diving: 1. Posch, CH; 2. Nichelle White, CH.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Cleveland Heights