Grand Blanc Champ's Choices Paying Off

September 29, 2015

By Bill Khan
Special for Second Half

GRAND BLANC — Emma Curtis had two decisions to make as she entered high school.

The first: Volleyball or swimming?

"I had a lot more fun during swimming, because of the people that I met," the Grand Blanc junior said. "When you get really good times, it's the best feeling in the world, so I just stuck with swimming."

The second: High school or club swimming?

Travel seasons in most sports don't conflict with high schools seasons, but swimmers have the option of competing in non-school programs rather than their high school teams. It was certainly a consideration for Curtis, a year-round swimmer who was beginning to hit her stride entering ninth grade.

Once again, as was the case when choosing a sport, the personal relationships she developed tipped the scales in favor of the high school team.

"I met great people," she said. "I just wanted to stick with them. I just loved the people. They have really good practices and I love the coach, so I just stuck with high school."

That was a huge relief to Grand Blanc coach Emily Overmyer, who knew about Curtis from her summer club performances and who coached her brother, Bailey.

"We were really glad she came out," Overmyer said. "She started to drop time instantly and became a very big factor on the team as a freshman."

According to Monday’s post by the Michigan Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association, Curtis has swam the third-fastest 50 time this fall statewide (24.19, second-fastest for LP Division 1 swimmers only), the eighth-fastest Division 1 time in the butterfly (1:00.98) and the fifth-fastest Division 1 time (and ninth overall) in the 100 freestyle (53.83).

Curtis had her first all-state performance as a freshman in the 2013 MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 1 meet, swimming the first leg for the seventh-place 200-yard freestyle relay team. Curtis teamed with Eryn Scannell, Rachel Eaton and Lindsay Baywol, a quartet that previously had set the Kensington Lakes Activities Association Lakes Conference record with a time of 1:38.46.

Curtis missed out on all-state in the 50 freestyle when she lost a swim-off with South Lyon's Stormy Malarik for the eighth and final spot in the championship heat. All eight swimmers in the final make all-state from MISCA. Curtis wound up with a 10th-place finish after swimming the consolation heat.

She was 14th in the 100 freestyle and was on the ninth-place 400 freestyle relay team.

Those were solid performances for a ninth-grader in her first MHSAA Finals meet, but they didn't foreshadow what was to come for Curtis last year. Even Curtis had no idea that the stage was set for her to make history the following season.

"Going to states my freshman year, I didn't really place well because it was my first time," she said. "I wasn't very good back then, so going into my sophomore year, I didn't expect to place really high."

She came to the LP Division 1 Finals at Eastern Michigan University to culminate a season in which she set five individual or relay school records, giving her a total of six in her first two years.

When Curtis stood on the starting board for the 50 freestyle final, she was about to hit the water with three other swimmers who beat her the previous year. Not only did Curtis have to lower her own times as a sophomore, but she needed to improve at a greater rate than her competition.

Curtis touched the wall with a time of 23.60 seconds, but it wasn't a clear-cut victory. Rockford senior Erin Hudson, who was second in 2013, hit the wall at nearly the same time.

"It was a very, very close race," Overmyer said. "Everybody had to look at the scoreboard to see what the actual result was, because you couldn't tell by the naked eye."

Curtis' name was in first place by one-hundredth of a second over Hudson. Curtis didn't look at the scoreboard to see if she had won. The faces of her teammates on the pool deck said it all.

"When I finished at the wall all of my teammates were screaming, 'You won states, you won!" Curtis said. "My friend (Scannell) actually pulled me up out of the water when I won; she's just funny."

Curtis knew she was in a close battle, catching occasional glimpses of Hudson during the race.

"That was really exciting," Curtis said. "When I would take a breath, I would see she was right next to me. I was trying to push through and go fast."

The Bobcats have had a strong swimming and diving program over the years, but Curtis became only the third MHSAA champion from Grand Blanc. Julie Little was the Class A diving champion in 1989 and Sarah Salenski won the 100 breaststroke in 1992.

Curtis' day wasn't done. She improved to fourth place in the 100 freestyle with a time of 52.01 seconds, then helped Grand Blanc take fifth place in the 200 freestyle relay, along with Sydney Schmit, Lindsey Sieloff and Scannell.

Earlier, Curtis was on a 12th-place 200 medley relay team.

"At the last state meet, I just did not feel good at all," Curtis said. "I was really tired when it got to the 100. Both are sprint races, so the 100 takes a whole lot more out of you. You could say I'm better in the 50. I'm getting a lot stronger in the 100. I did really good during the summer. It's a long course (during non-school events), so it's 100 meters instead of 100 yards. I don't really know what my time would be in yards, but it was a good time for a long course."

Now that Curtis is a defending MHSAA champion, she can't sneak up on anybody when the Division 1 Finals are held Nov. 20-21 at Holland Aquatic Center.

Overmyer is trying to ensure Curtis doesn't feel any undue pressure to repeat.

"We're trying not to focus on that," Overmyer said. "She doesn't appear to be putting any extra pressure on herself. She always puts extra pressure on herself because she doesn't want to let the team down. She always competes for the team and goes where she's needed. When it comes to pressure, that's the main aspect of it."

Bill Khan served as a sportswriter at The Flint Journal from 1981-2011 and currently contributes to the State Champs! Sports Network. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.

PHOTOS: (Top) Emma Curtis, goggles off, looks to the scoreboard after the 50 freestyle final at last season’s LP Division 1 meet. (Middle) Curtis stands on the top of the award stand, flanked by Rockford’s runner-up Erin Hudson and third-place finisher Meegan Snyman.

No Slowing Down For Oxford's Krajcarski After Championship Finish

By Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com

December 12, 2024

OXFORD — A championship was won, school history was made, and the accolades have been constant and deserved for Oxford senior Tristan Krajcarski.

Greater DetroitBut despite all of that, rest and taking it easy certainly hasn’t been on the itinerary for Krajcarski ever since she won the diving competition at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 1 Finals on Nov. 23 – even though her high school athletic diving career is technically over.

“The most time I took off was two days,” Krajcarski said. “But I’ve been in the pool pretty much every day with the boys team working on 1 and 3-meter (dives).”

Next up for Krajcarski is a collegiate career at Buffalo, and in her words, there is “so much more” to achieve in the sport even after a terrific high school career. 

Krajcarski qualified for the Finals three out of her four years at Oxford, finishing third as a junior with an All-American score of 329.05 before having a dominant senior season. 

Krajcarski won every event she competed in this fall, highlighted by becoming the first diver — boys or girls — from Oxford to win a Finals title when she accumulated 432.60 points, nearly 40 points more than runner-up Lindi Jenkins of Saline.

What drove Krajcarski to the top of the state and what still drives her to do more was her greatest disappointment, which occurred during her sophomore year.

After qualifying for the Finals as a freshman, Krajcarski had a disappointing 2022 Regional and didn’t advance. She rallied behind teammates and supported them during their championship events in Holland, but not competing herself there became a rallying cry.

Krajcarski reaches the water on a dive during the Finals.“It was very hard to not have that expectation of (making the Finals) met when the people around me did,” she said. “I felt kind of defeated, and it motivated me to do more.

“It was kind of scary to do more, but I knew I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Just how I worked and how I viewed diving changed. Now I always have this motivation to always keep going, and it’s become my expectation. I don’t really like taking time off — even though I probably should — but I just feel like I can constantly get better to not be let down again.”

Krajcarski certainly wasn’t disappointed with her junior and senior years, which featured the third-place finish as a junior, the Finals championship this year and a trip to Rome, Italy, this past summer as a representative of the AAU U.S. national team, which competed in the same venue used for the 1960 Summer Olympics. 

John Pearson, the diving coach for both Oxford and Lake Orion, said Krajcarski easily could have scored even higher at the Finals, but that more difficult dives simply weren’t necessary. 

“She was already outscoring everybody by 40 points with a tuck position instead of a pike position,” he said. “At the state meet, we decided to stay with what she was comfortable with. To me, it was more important at that meet to be comfortable. All Tristan had to do at the state meet was be herself and get up and down 11 times. I was confident that if she did that and if she did her best, nobody could catch her.”

Not too shabby for someone who didn’t even get into diving until the spring of her eighth grade year. 

Krajcarski originally was a gymnast but said after a while she got burned out in that sport before discovering a love for diving.

“I’ve always loved the water and I always liked swimming, but I wasn’t very good at swimming itself,” she said. “Combining what I’d already known of gymnastics with the water, it made me very happy. People think it’s really similar to gymnastics, but you have to learn a whole new set of techniques. I thought it was cool to go through the process of learning something new while still having the experience from gymnastics.”

It was obviously a successful switch, and now nothing is slowing her passion to get better at diving every day.

As the last couple of weeks have shown, not even a championship has made Krajcarski complacent.

“I can get way better,” she said. 

Keith DunlapKeith 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 (Top) Oxford senior Tristan Krajcarski, holding the “champion” sign, stands atop the podium after receiving her medal for winning the Division 1 diving competition last month. (Middle) Krajcarski reaches the water on a dive during the Finals. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)