Swimming at 2017 State Meet

Katie Markunas

Five of the Tiger Swimmers went to Virginia Tech to compete in the 2017 State Meet:
Kevin White
David Kiesnowski
Saul Fragoso
Caleb Rogers
Adriano De Angelis

The boys swam incredibly well, stepping up and not letting the crowd of over 655 athletes, their coaches, the fans, the officials, the timers, and all of the other people in the natatorium unnerve them!

Friday Morning the 200 Medley relay did incredibly well, not only looking strong but dropping time. Then Kevin White dropped time in his 200 IM and Adriano De Angelis dropped time in 50 freestyle! The Tigers did an excellent job of cheering for each other as well as their sisters from Chatham Hall! The girl’s relays and 50 frees also went well, with the ladies dropping time too!

The team went back on Friday night to watch finals, as none of the boys or girls made it back to swim and both teams got good exposure to the excitement and energy that finals brings.

After a good night’s sleep, the boys got up on Saturday morning to swim again, and once more dropped time, looked strong, and made Hargrave proud. Kevin White swam his 500 freestyle, won his heat, and dropped over 15 seconds! Then the boys’ 200 Freestyle relay took to the pool and put up some good splits.

Again they sat with and cheered for the Chatham Hall girls, and even caught up with an Alumnus who now coaches for a team of his own! Mike Miller ’06 is now the head coach at Bishop Sullivan Catholic High School. They not only were staying in the same hotel as his team, but even ate dinner next to each other the first night. It was so cool to watch the boys chat him up about his experience at Hargrave and to see the Cadet bond that seamlessly stretches over time and unites these guys. They hope to see Mike at the next alumni event so the boys can catch up with him again!

Saturday evening, the Tigers returned to the pool to honor the class of 2017 seniors with the annual state senior walk-out parade. The goofy costumes, loud crowd, and team spirit was rocking the pool as their only senior to qualify this year: Adriano De Angelis represented the school and walked with pride around the pool. It was fun to cheer for him and then stay to watch a few of the final races. The boys got great exposure to some truly impressive and fast swimming and did an excellent job of their own.

We kept up the swimming twitter account over the weekend so please check us out at hargrave_swim for pictures and tweets! The professional photographer from the meet should also be posting pictures on the meet website sometime today. If you’d like to see what the meet looked like please check that out at: http://visaaswim.blogspot.com/

Swim