By JOSEPH KELLARD
The girls¹ team went 2-10 in its inaugural season last year, but then stepped up a division, kept scores closer against tougher opponents and completed their second season with a 5-6 record last semester. And while it¹s hard to measure just how much the early-bird practices have improved the girls scholastically, word is they find classes come easier the first half of the school year.
³The girls tell me that they do so much better in the fall for school,² said coach Sara Dowler, citing her team¹s near-perfect attendance at practices. ³First, they¹re more awake for school, and they have a routine and discipline and do so well.²
³You¹re definitely more awake and focused in the morning at school,² said Kristin Gromling, a senior butterfly swimmer who earned top 10 spots in All Conference and county meets last semester.
Dowler regards Gromling and junior Sarah Ryan as the team¹s top swimmers. Ryan earned second place in last season¹s county championships and made it to states both years, placing in the top 20 out of some 40 swimmers in the November meet. She also swims with the United States Swim Club and competed in the junior nationals, an event that has featured Olympic swimmers.
³Swimming is something that takes a lot of dedication to be good at,² said Ryan, who began her competitive career at age 8.
³Sarah¹s amazing,² Dowler said. ³Seriously, she¹ll get a full scholarship somewhere.²
The team has 20 swimmers and four divers in grades seven to 12, including five Oceanside Middle School students. Last season, eight swimmers qualified for the county championships, three placing in the top 10 (one an eighth-grader), and two divers, both eighth-graders, made the counties as well.
³Beating Syosset by two points was huge because no one expected that,² Dowler said about the team¹s best meet last season.
The foundation for that achievment for their school began back in Gromling¹s freshman and sophomore years, when she swam independently under Dowler and pushed her coach to ask for a team. While Dowler said she pitched the idea to athletic director Dave Zawatson, Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown said he, too, had wanted to start such a team. The team initially ran as an intramural club, but few boys showed enough interest to develop it into a co-ed program. The district then worked out the fee and hours for the new team to use the pool at the Friedberg JCC in Oceanside, a community organization the district once rented space to at School 6.
Last year, the program added a diving team. And while most high school teams have three coaches, Dowler remains a one-woman army. An OHS health teacher, she swam for Long Beach High School from 1990 to Œ94, earning All County honors and competing in the state championships, and Towson University, a Division I school where she was captain in 1997 and Œ98, setting then school records in the 200 and 400 relays. Dowler originally coached girls¹ soccer at OMS, but finds the swim team is her best group yet.
³They all get along,² she said. ³They have big sleepover parties for the team. The parents are involved. They come to all the meets. It¹s just a really nice group of girls.²
Nicole Sweeney, a senior who had swum only the breaststroke since she was 9, credited Dowler with helping her perfect the backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly to perform in the individual medley at meets. ³Even if you feel you can¹t do something,² Sweeney said about her coach. ³She¹ll make sure that you¹re determined and make you believe you can.²
Dowler promoted Gromling to team captain last season, and Gromling noted improvement in Sweeney and all her fellow swimmers since the first season. ³No one thought that we would be good, and we actually were,² Gromling said. ³So we surprised people.²
Gromling started swimming at age 5, and said she wants to take her strokes as far as she can. She aims to make the swim team at the University of North Carolina, the college at the top of her list. ³I just really enjoy the competitions and doing good,² she said. ³You just feel good about yourself while competing.²
Ryan has similar goals. While she believes that she began too late to become an Olympian, her sights are sent on continuing her swimming career at Villanova. ³What I like most about swimming is the feeling of accomplishment,² she said, ³and that tired feeling you get after being in a race.²
