Small Starfire team seeking big success

As practice began, Janelle Gresla had the same concern about both of her teams.
Her swimmers are small in number.
Now she’s hoping her boys squad can follow the example set by the girls early in their season by opening 2-0.
“Both teams are extremely small,” said Gresla, whose boys will open their season Tuesday at Adams Central. “We’re sort of in a wait-and-see game. We’ve got some fairly strong swimmers, we’re just not going to have a lot of depth.”
The top returning athlete for a Starfire team that was eighth out of 10 at the 2012 sectional is senior Cory Sank.
The senior turned in the top sectional finish among returning swimmers, having posted a fourth-place effort in the 500 freestyle with a time of 5 minutes, 29 seconds. That was best event for SAHS at the sectional meet as it placed three swimmers in the top 16.
Sank was also 14th in the 100 backstroke.
“He swam distance for me most of the season last year and did awesome,” said Gresla. “I look at his 500 free and I’d love to see him down close to the 5:10 mark this year and under 2:00 in the 200 free. I look for Cory to give me some strength in the distance events.”
The Starfires have just one other senior, Mitchell Kaverman, and just two other upperclassmen – juniors Chris Inniger and Shad Swygart.
Kaverman (100 breaststroke) and Swygart (100 backstroke) both turned in seventh-place finishes last season at the sectional. Kaverman was also 13th in the 200 individual medley.
Inniger added a 12th-place finish behind Sank in the 500 freestyle.
 “I look for him to be pretty solid in those events as well as take some ownership of the team,” said Gresla of Kaverman. “In and out of the pool, he has been one that has stepped up and supported the swimming program at South Adams. He’s been there for swimming lessons. He helped coach the summer club this year. He’s really worked hard at helping develop the new kids.”
The remainder of the squad will be made up of a group of freshmen – Drew LeFever, Xavier Rupp, Jesse Sutton, David Steffen, Daniel Steffen and Daniel Burson — that Gresla hopes can help start building her team’s numbers again.
Several of the newcomers have competed in the South Adams summer program, and LeFever has also been a part of the winter program at Jay County. Gresla said she sees both LeFever and Rupp competing in the butterfly, with Daniel Steffen in the breaststroke and David Steffen in the sprint freestyle events.
 “I’ve got some kids with some swimming background,” said Gresla. “I think it would be great for them to finish .500, and it would also be great for us to get a couple of events (out of the sectional) just to get the experience of getting down to the state meet.
“I just think it’s exciting. I wish I had bigger number so we could fill all the events. But I think I’ve got a lot of quality on the boys team.”[[In-content Ad]]