The end of the 2018-2019 Swim season has finally arrived for the Swimming Patriots.
The South Plainfield meet was a Win that concluded with the team having a great seasonal record of 7-3.
Location
The meet against South Plainfield High School was held at the Jewish Community Center at 3:30 pm. Due to the schools’ early arrival, the meet was able to be started about half an hour earlier.
Due to the limited amount of swimming lanes (four lanes), Colonia only had two lanes to swim their events. This limited the number of swimmers that could swim for the meet.
Times and Records
The team of Sylvia Rozalski (backstroke), Tyler Benson (breaststroke), Nicole Ben-David (butterfly) and Mikolaj Jucha (freestyle) dominated the 200 Medley Relay (50 yards of a different stroke per swimmer) at 2 minutes and 7 seconds.
Mikolaj Jucha came in first for the 50 Freestyle at 26. 35 seconds as well as the 100 Freestyle at 58.73 seconds!
Nicole Ben-David struck again winning first in the 100 Butterfly at exactly ONE minute!
She again took on the challenge of racing the 500 Freestyle- the longest individual event of the meet. Ben-David finished off strong at 5 minutes and 51 seconds.
The team did well in the 200 Freestyle Relay, with Mikolaj Jucha, Sylvia Rozalski, Melody Espin and Nicole Ben-David finishing first at 1 minute and 59 seconds.
The team finished off strong with a victory in the last event- the 400 Freestyle Relay. The relay is the longest relay event of the meet, with each swimmer racing 100 yards. Adrian Hernandez, Megan Anderson, Mikayla Calitis and Tyler Benson finished off first at 4 minutes and 40 seconds.
Final Results
Nicole Ben-David herself was pretty happy with her accomplishments. “I worked hard to beat the other swimmers,” says the 15-year-old club swimmer, “Not only was it my contribution in that meet, but the rest of my teammates excelled in the pool as well.”
“Additionally, as each “leg” of the relay races is important, I liked that we tried our best to out-touch the other team.”
The final score of the meet was 59 to 35- with Colonia High School being victorious. The Swimming Patriots now have a record of 7-3. Along with the great performance at the GMCs, the victory leads the team to advance to the NJSIAA State Tournament.
Senior Statistician, Mariam Merghany age 17, states, “ We had more points [scored] than the since the first event… and we got a lot of 1st places that meet! It was pretty impressive.”
