Mourning Those Who Contributed Much

BIRMINGHAM — Growing up, Birmingham Seaholm senior Elliot Rijnovean was involved in a lot of sports, whether it was soccer, basketball, hockey, tennis or anything else that got him moving. 

Eventually though, there was one important intangible that swimming ended up providing. 

“I started winning in swimming, and I wasn’t winning in other sports,” he said. “So I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to stick with this because this could be my thing.’ It turned out that it was.”

It indeed has been Rijnovean’s thing, given he has done a lot of winning during a terrific high school career. 

Next week at the Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals, Rijnovean will pursue his fifth and sixth individual championships.

Two years ago as a sophomore, he won the 100-yard backstroke (48.69) and 100 butterfly (48.83). He pulled the feat off again last year, capturing the 100 back in 47.10 and the 100 butterfly in 47.85. 

Rijnovean enters this Finals in good form, having set a personal best of 46.72 in the 100 back last week at the Oakland Activities Association Red championships.

While he excels in both races, he started first with backstroke as a young swimmer and is a little more comfortable in that event.

“When I was 8, I won our summer championship in the 25-meter backstroke, so I’ve always been a backstroker,” Rijnovean said. “But I kind of picked up the fly a little later, my freshman year. Obviously, my sophomore and junior year I ended up swimming fly and won both times. It kind of complements backstroke because they’re both similar in terms of how the event is swum. Basically, it’s like an underwater focus. Underwater dolphin kicks, those go hand in hand together for me.”

As it turns out, taking up the butterfly might serve Rijnovean well beyond high school. Committed to Indiana, Rijnovean said coaches for the Hoosiers have emphasized there might be more opportunities in the butterfly once he gets to Bloomington.

“Coach Ray Looze, the head coach of Indiana, said that they needed butterfly,” said Rijnovean, adding that Indiana coaches want him to keep improving and be ready in both strokes. “I really wanted to swim butterfly because he said Indiana needs it, so that’s why I kept pushing for butterfly last year.”

Before he worries about college, Rijnovean wants to make the final week of his high school career as memorable as possible.

Seaholm has a first-year coach in Casey Sreenan, who from a swimming perspective felt like he inherited a mansion getting to coach Rijnovean to start off his tenure. 

Knowing what Rijnovean has meant to the program and how much teammates look up to him, Sreenan said there have been times he’s made Rijnovean a de facto coach and let him run drills during practices. 

“One day I was just like, ‘If there’s anything you want to work on or if you have a suggested workout, let me know,’” Sreenan said. “He would send me sets, and we would redo them. And the whole team would do them. We got great results. He’s got a great work ethic and great technique, obviously. It was easy to kind of have days where the focus was on things he wanted to work on. It benefitted the team as a whole.”

As is the case with a lot of nationally-acclaimed swimmers, there was temptation for Rijnovean to focus solely on club and not bother with high school athletics. 

But he was having none of that and will leave Seaholm eternally grateful for his high school experience. 

“It’s so different from club,” he said. “It’s more like a brotherhood. Swimming really is an individual sport. You swim, you do your best, you get your time, you win. It’s kind of all about you. But for high school, it’s more like brothers you train with and you just get through hard times with. When you win with them, it felt so much better.” 

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 (Top) Birmingham Seaholm’s Elliot Rijnovean swims to a championship in the backstroke at last year’s LP Division 2 Finals. (Middle) Rijnovean stands atop the podium after receiving his medal. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)