Dexter Builds Lead, Carries it to D2 Title
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
March 12, 2016
UNIVERSITY CENTER – Mike McHugh was floating on his back in the Saginaw Valley State University pool Saturday afternoon, water soaking his clothes and a smile covering his face.
The Dexter coach, who had spent the previous four hours wearing out his shoes walking the pool’s deck, could now relax as his Dreadnaughts had won the Lower Peninsula Division 2 boys swimming and diving championship.
“It was the best swim I’ve ever had,” said McHugh, who also led Dexter to an MHSAA title in 2012 and a runner-up finish in 2014. “These guys work. I’m thankful for all the work they put in. I’m thankful for all the support I get from home. It’s a relief. It’s been a lot of pressure being ranked No. 1 all year, so being able to finish it off feels really good.”
Behind championship swims in the 200-yard freestyle and 100 backstroke by senior Rob Zofchak, and 13 total top-eight finishes, Dexter finished with a meet-best 284 points. Warren DeLaSalle was second with 266, two-time reigning champion Birmingham Seaholm was third with 211 and Battle Creek Lakeview was fourth with 205.
“We knew coming in we had to build up a lead,” McHugh said. “DeLaSalle’s really good in the back and breast(stroke). We’re really good in the 200 (freestyle), 500 and (individual medley). We knew we had to go big, and having seven top-eight swims in those three events was huge. I had three seniors make top eight in the 200 free (Zofchak, Matt Bergdolt who was second, and David Merz who was eighth). That’s the leadership we’ve got. Three senior leaders, two of them captains, just doing everything they can.”
Dexter still had work to do in the final race of the meet, although it wasn’t much. If DeLaSalle didn’t win the 400 freestyle relay, all the Dreadnaughts needed to win the meet were to not get disqualified in the race. They finished second, one spot ahead of the Pilots. Fittingly, it was Zofchak who swam the final leg of the relay.
“It’s something special,” Zofchak said. “You feel great. Even though you’re swimming hard, you’re going as hard as you can and you’re really tired, you still feel great. Like, ‘Wow. There’s not much I can do right now to mess this up.’”
The anchor leg capped off a great day in the pool for Zofchak, who won the 200 freestyle in 1 minute, 38.23 seconds, and the 100 backstroke in 49.26 – breaking his own meet record.
“I swam pretty well,” he said. “There’s definitely things I can improve on, and I’ll keep working on those, but in general I’m pretty proud of my swims.”
Zofchak was one of three swimmers to take home two individual titles on the day, joining Grosse Pointe South’s Jacob Montague and Midland Dow’s Nehemiah Mork.
Montague won the 200 individual medley and 100 breaststroke with LP Division 2 meet records of 1:47.4 and 53.93, respectively. It was the second straight year he’d won MHSAA titles in those events.
As Montague swam to commanding leads in both races, spectators watched in awe, some even counting the number of times he came out of the water in the breaststroke and marveling at how infrequently he did so.
“My freshman year, I only qualified for one event at the state meet and I didn’t even make it to finals,” Montague said. “I never thought that I’d be able to compete at a level like this. These past couple years I’ve given everything I can in the pool, every practice, every day. I just give 100 percent, just trying to get better. When everything pays off in the end, it’s just a great feeling.”
Mork was also a repeat champion in both of his events. He won the 50 freestyle in 20.83 seconds, one hundredth of a second ahead of Seaholm’s Liam Little. Mork won the 100 in 45.43 seconds.
“I could kind of see that (Little) was close to me – I had no idea it was a hundredth of a second close,” Mork said. “I saw him gliding a little bit; that’s when I knew I had to get a good finish, and I touched him out. But then everybody started cheering and I thought, ‘Aw shoot, I lost.’
“Then I looked up and it was a hundredth of a second and I still won, so I’ll take it.”
Also repeating as champion was Seaholm diver Sebastian Fay, who won with 479.4 points. He had a commanding lead coming into the final dives, but didn’t rest on his laurels.
“It puts more (pressure) on me, because diving is a sport where anything can happen,” Fay said. “I try not to let the lead get in my head because then I’ll just relax. With that dive especially, that last dive, I need to go after it, and if I relax I’m going to screw it up.
“So honestly, I felt a little more nervous at the end. My heart was pounding pretty hard, so I had to calm down.”
Seaholm won the 200 and 400 freestyle relays, while DeLaSalle won the 200 medley relay. DeLaSalle’s P.J. Desmet won the 100 butterfly in 51.21, while Rochester Adams’ Graham Miotke won the 500 freestyle in 4:35.64.
PHOTOS: (Top) Swimmers launch during Saturday’s LP Division 2 Finals at Saginaw Valley State University. (Middle) A diver arches during competition. (Below) Dexter poses with its championship trophy. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Groves' MacDonald Caps Career with Individual Swim Sweep, Team Repeat
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
March 12, 2024
It can be amazing sometimes how winning can completely change an athlete’s mind.
Such was the case for Birmingham Groves senior swimmer Gus MacDonald when he was 13 years old.
While swimming at an event for his club team, his coach decided “for fun” — according to MacDonald — to put him in a breaststroke event.
Never mind that MacDonald up to that point had mainly swum in the backstroke and wasn’t particularly good in the breaststroke.
Then, something unforeseen happened.
“I ended up winning by a few seconds and dropping multiple seconds off of my time,” MacDonald said.
And so MacDonald’s racing transformation began.
Opponents probably wish they could go back in a time machine and prevent that coach from inserting MacDonald into that breaststroke race, because ever since MacDonald has established himself as one of the state’s best in the event regardless of division.
MacDonald successfully repeated as champion in the 100-yard breaststroke at the Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals on Saturday, claiming first place in a time of 54.88.
“I find breaststroke more fun because it works on specific muscles and doesn’t wear me out as much in total,” MacDonald said. “My mom was also a breaststroker, so I think I’ve picked up some of the breaststroke genes from her.”
Oh, but MacDonald did even more.
He also tried his hand this year in the 200 individual medley and won that event Saturday in a time of 1:46.51.
Then, saving his best for last, MacDonald swam the anchor leg for Groves’ winning team in the 400 freestyle relay, which provided the most dramatic ending possible.
Thanks to a first-place finish in that event, Groves ended up repeating as team champion by one point ahead of rival Birmingham Seaholm.
If there was a more storybook ending to a high school career, it’s hard to imagine.
Despite his victory in the IM, MacDonald likely will continue to swim breaststroke in college. He chose to swim for Notre Dame over Michigan and Wisconsin, and he said Notre Dame coaches already are envisioning him being a breaststroke specialist once he arrives in South Bend.
In addition to being a leader in the pool for races, MacDonald and the rest of the Groves seniors took on the task of guiding the rest of the team through a coaching transition this winter.
Nick Valice took over the program, and the transition was smooth from both the perspective of the new coach and the swimmers.
“It’s been easy sailing,” Valice said.
Valice said the hardest adjustment initially with MacDonald in particular was learning what training methods he prefers.
“I spent the first couple of weeks trying to figure out what he’s capable of running versus the caliber level of kids I’ve coached beforehand,” Valice said. “He is definitely able to do a little more. He responds to stuff a little differently, so it’s just been tweaking workouts that benefit him specifically as opposed to the whole team or your generic run-of-the-mill swimmer. I will say he will eat up any workout you throw at him.”
MacDonald certainly proved that with a terrific high school career, especially with the two breaststroke Finals titles.
That’s pretty good for someone who didn’t know he liked the event until he was 13.
“I was terrible at it,” MacDonald said.
Not anymore. Not at all.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties
PHOTOS Birmingham Groves’ Angus MacDonald stands for a photo after receiving his medal for winning the 100 breaststroke Saturday at Eastern Michigan University. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)