NORTH ALLEGHENY READY FOR ENCORE
North Allegheny has won its share of WPIAL and PIAA Class 3A swimming titles over the years, but few schools have ever had as dominant a performance as the boys did last season.
Now, as the team heads into a new year, the biggest question is what can they do for an encore?
“Well, I’m not sure we have an encore for that but we are still setting our goals as high as we always have,” North Allegheny coach Patrick Wenzel said. “Our boys are working hard and I think, more than anything, they want to continue to win championships and we’d like to put our times up as fast as we possibly can.”
It will be difficult to eclipse what the Tigers did in winning their seventh consecutive WPIAL title and their second consecutive state championship.
In their second dual meet of the season, Mason Gonzalez, Andrew Zhang, sophomore Rick Mihm and junior Jack Wright broke the U.S. national public school record in the 200yard freestyle relay with a time of 1:20.46. Joel Songer replaced Zhang at the state meet and they lowered that time even further when they popped a 1:19.60 to break the PIAA record they set in 2017.
Jacksonville (Fla.) Bolles High School holds the National Federation of High Schools mark with a 1:19.27 set in 2012.
They were even more impressive in the 400 freestyle relay. At the same early season meet, Gonzalez, Zhang, Wright and Mihm swam a 2:57.59 in the event to break the U.S. public high school record of 2:59.00 set by Grenada (Calif.) High School in 2014. In the state finals, they shattered Bolles’ NFHS standard of 2:54.43 with a 2:53.81.
In the WPIAL finals, the team won eight of the 11 individual swimming events, with only Kimani Gregory of Penn Hills (100 freestyle and 100 butterfly) and Josh Matheny of Upper St. Clair (100 breaststroke) able to keep the Tigers off the top of the podium.
This year, the team will be built around the swimmers the team has returning. Songer and Wright are both seniors and Mihm a junior and all three will have to help fill in the gap left by Gonzalez, who won the 50 and 100 freestyle state titles before he moved on to swim at Stanford.
Mihm won state titles in the 200 individual medley and 500 freestyle, while Wright won the 200 freestyle and finished second to Gonzalez in the 100 freestyle.
“It’s really just about striving after excellence,” Wenzel said. “We’ve lost good kids before and, though Mason was great, we have the ‘next-man-up’ mentality that Pittsburghers have and we’ll just get some more guys up to the state meet and we’ll replace those points that way.”
Class 2A
State titles were hard to come by for WPIAL swimmers at Bucknell University’s Kinney Natatorium last season.
See also non-existent.
No WPIAL boys swimmer won a PIAA Class 2A championship in March, the second consecutive year in which District 7 was shut out at the state finals.
There are, however, several swimmers back who could make an impact at the state level and break the losing streak.
Neshannock freshman Conner McBeth finished fourth in the 100 freestyle and is the No. 2 finisher returning from last year behind North Schuylkill senior Reggie Crawford. He also missed qualifying in the 50 freestyle, but his ninthplace consolation time would have given him sixth place and he is second to Crawford among returning swimmers in that event as well.
Belle Vernon sophomore Ian Shahan brought home a pair of silver medals in his first foray into the state meet and will be the No. 2 returning swimmer in both of his events as well. Shahan was second in the 100 backstroke to Josiah Lauver of Bishop McDevitt and to Adam Mahler of Holy Redeemer in the 100 butterfly.