By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
With all the success the Mainland Regional boys swimming team is having, it’s been easy to overlook the girls squad. The Mustangs came into the third week in January sporting a 5-3 record and were sixth overall in the South Group B standings. Their only losses came to Cape-Atlantic League powerhouses Ocean City and Egg Harbor Township, and to Southern Regional, one of the better teams in the Shore Conference.
The boys team has been grabbing plenty of headlines by jumping out to a 9-0 start and also having a relay team that broke three national records, and that has spurred on the girls team to do whatever it can to compete with the squad it shares a pool with.
“It’s a lot of fun when they are all here practicing. There’s tempo and everybody is jacked to swim hard and swim fast. That definitely is very true. Everybody swims faster when they are all here,” said Mainland coach Mike Schiavo. “Swim meets are exciting, but sometimes we don’t even realize it, honestly. It’s just like, man, they are swimming so fast. With that (boys) 400 free relay, everybody knew they were going after (the national record). With the 200 free relay, it just kind of happened so nobody was really paying attention. I remember looking at the girls when Justin hit the wall and they were just going crazy.”
Schiavo’s theory is that the girls want some attention from the boys just as much as they want their own headlines. His girls know they can’t put up the kind of times that a boy can in a particular race, but they still push themselves to get noticed in their own right.
“For the most part, both genders will swim faster when they are around the other gender. They want to show off. They want to be noticed,” Schiavo said. “They don’t necessarily want to compete with the boys, but that want some attention — from the boys. They know it’s a different animal, but they still try to do the best they can.”
Senior Courtney Campbell said having the boys team, which won an overall state championship a year ago, reach such a high level of success certainly has had an effect on the girls team.
“It’s really motivating to have those guys and swim with them every day. They push us to work harder so that we can show off our skills, too. This program is really great. Everyone is super nice and works hard every day. This team is definitely more than a team, it’s a family,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun. We’ve been swimming really well. It definitely motivates me on a daily basis to push myself harder so that I can reach my goals and just have an overall successful season.”
“It’s really cool. The girls team, and the newer guys on the boys team, the success has really given them motivation. The girls team is definitely feeding off it every day in practice and the energy levels are high,” said Justin Liu, a senior on the boys team. “A lot of us have classes together, so there’s a lot of communication back and forth. Our success is helping them, and theirs is helping us.”
Brian Booth, head coach of the boys team, said the teams haven’t always practiced together. But once he and Schiavo decided to combine workouts, they’ve seen an up-tick in the intensity level and the overall success of the programs.
“We used to split our practices. The boys would practice for two hours, then the girls for two hours, and each week we would rotate it. Bringing everyone back together, I think it helped both teams,” Booth said. “There are a lot of days when the girls practice harder than the boys. Some of our boys are very gifted and sometimes they fall into just going through the motions, but when you have a girl swimming just as hard as you, it’s motivation for them. And once they pick it up, the girls pick it up and everyone gets faster, and that’s cool to see.”
So much winning going on at the Mainland pool has not only attracted more fan support, but also strengthened the bond between the two teams. It’s provided a higher energy level. Everybody is anxious to get into the pool these days.
“My boys, and the girls, everyone gets along really well. We’ve had years when not everybody has meshed together well. But they are all really good friends, they hang out together, and it’s fun watching them,” Booth said. “I have a son on the team who is a sophomore, and before he got here I was more excited for him to be a part of the team than I was to be coaching him, just because I knew what a good group this is.”
“We’re very competitive. I know everyone wants to do well, so that’s what we strive for,” Campbell added. “They’re very supportive of us, as we are of them. Everyone is more hyped up and ready to grind it out every day, and it’s really cool to see what the end results are going to be.”
Senior Brian McGroarty said the teams spend time together outside of swimming, and that’s added another level to the good vibes surrounding Mainland swimming.
“It’s just a great environment around here,” he said. “Everybody is friends, we go out and hang out outside of practice and when we see each other in school we say hello. It’s just a good place to be. We all work hard, we all know what we have to do, and we’re getting the job done.”
Schiavo said the popularity of social media also has added to the buzz, and even though they might not realize it, the success of the boys team has had a direct impact on his girls.
“With the social media, from the articles that (Glory Days) and other publications have done, to seeing pictures up on international websites such as swimswam.com, to our own little Instagram and Twitter accounts, it’s just really fun for them to see not just that they are on these sites, but also who is checking in,” Schiavo said. “They are very motivated. The reality is, we have some very naturally gifted boys and we can only do what we can do with our own abilities. These girls work incredibly hard to get faster and help the team as best they can. They work through injuries and sickness. It’s not necessarily thinking, hey, if we work hard we can break national records, but underneath their competitiveness gets jacked up when they are practicing against these guys. They don’t even realize it, but that pushes them to swim faster.”
Winning makes everything better. It makes breakfast taste better, it makes sleeping easier. Heck, it even makes it more fun to go to class every day.
“This can be a very lonely and painful sport. Whether we are winning or losing, to know that we keep swimming personal bests even though we are beat up and sore, that alone is motivation enough. But it certainly makes it more exciting when you are winning,” Schiavo said. “You start to wonder what special thing is going to happen today? More people are coming to watch our meets. And having the general public coming here just adds more incentive for them.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays