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Hornets place ninth for second straight year
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: March 13, 2008
It's official: the Saline boys' swimming and diving program is one of Division 1's best.
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The Hornets followed up their first-ever top-10 finish at the 2007 state meet with a repeat performance at Saturday's 2008 meet, where behind a top-8 performance in all three relays and a big day on the diving board, Saline took ninth place with 113 points.
"Our goal was to stay in the top 10 and that's what we did," said Saline head coach Todd Brunty. I'm very, very proud of what our guys did this weekend. It was a great way to cap off our season."
Arguably the biggest positive for Brunty was the state team's balance and commitment. Engelmeier and Duong, a senior in his final performance for the Hornets, agreed to swim the 200-yard medley relay and 200 freestyle relay preliminaries despite the fact that quick turnaround times would hurt their standing in the 200 freestyle and 100 backstroke, respectively.
The end result was that all three relays qualified for Saturday's final heat.
"If you can get all three of your relays into the top-eight, you've basically guaranteed yourself a place in the top 10," Brunty said. "What Engelmeier and Duong did, sacrificing an individual opportunity to help those relays, that's the definition of team. If they hadn't done that, we would not have finished where we did."
The highest-placing relay was Saline's 200 medley team of Duong, Matt DeFauw, Engelmeier, and Alex Wu, which took fourth in the finals with a time of 1:38.80. Wu, Engelmeier, Sam Wittig, and Daniel Kung placed eighth in the 200 freestyle relay finals in 1:30.16 and Duong, Wu, Wittig, and Engelmeier likewise took eighth in the 400 freestyle relay in 3:19.40.
Outside of the relays, Saline's biggest impact came in diving. After placing eighth in 2006 and sixth in 2007, junior Joel Chambers claimed All-State honors for a third consecutive year by finishing third Saturday with a total score of 351.00. And in his first trip to the state finals, sophomore Hank Remenapp also placed 15th, scoring 307.50.
"Chambers did a great job. He was one dive away from second," Brunty said. "We got 18 points in diving, so that's more than 10 percent of our total. That's huge. We had divers like Joel and Hank and other teams didn't, and that made a big difference."
Chambers (whose finish was the best for a Saline individual performer at the state meet since Daniel Warner took second in the individual medley in 2005) and Remenapp were far from the only Hornets to shine in individual events, however.
Sophomore Wittig took 11th in the 2:01.31. Wu, a junior, swam a lifetime-best 22.38 for 13th in the 50 freestyle. Duong placed ninth with a 54.38 in the 100 backstroke. DeFauw — a senior academic All-American making his first and only state meet appearance — took 15th in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:02.66.
Freshman Mike Fisher swam 1:03.21 in the 100 breaststroke to finish 21st in the preliminaries and Engelmeier finished one place out of the finals with a 17th-place 1:48.43 in the 200 freestyle preliminaries.
Brunty was more than happy with the contributions of all eight state swimmers.
"Alex Wu anchors three relays and has three lifetime bests, Matt DeFauw scores in the breaststroke in his final meet, Sam Wittig had a great IM ... this team wasn't just one or two guys carrying everybody else," Brunty said. "Everybody we brought made an individual cut and everybody contributed. This was a team effort."
With the Hornets' status among the state's top-10 cemented, Brunty believes it's time to move forward — and with eight of the 10 Saline athletes who competed Saturday returning (and only champion Ann Arbor Huron and runner-up Pioneer returning more points scored from Saturday's meet), the sky could be the limit.
"They're chomping at the bit," Brunty said of his returning swimmers. They're already back in the pool. The parents, the community, the eighth-graders who are coming up, they can see the pieces of the puzzle coming together. You look at Huron and they finished 18th last year, so who knows?
"Our boys are hungry and it's only going to get better."
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