Belle Vernon standout on track
Shahan hoping to add a few more titles to his resume
Ian Shahan didn’t do as well as he would have hoped at the recent Speedo Winter Junior Nationals at Georgia Tech.
Then again, he has pretty high standards.
“It could have gone better, but I’m still pretty happy with how I performed,’’ Shahan said. “I dropped time in one of my events, held time in one other and came up about a second short in two others, but I think, as of right now, I’m well ahead of where I was last year.”
That might be bad news for the rest of the WPIAL.
Last year, the Belle Vernon junior won WPIAL and PIAA Class 2A titles in both the 100-yard butterfly and 100 freestyle. He won a WPIAL title in the 100 backstroke as a freshman and was second in the 100 butterfly in 2018.
At junior nationals, Shahan swam the 100 freestyle in 45.29 seconds to finish 28th overall, but the time was a 0.10 second improvement over his state championship swim in March at Bucknell University’s Kinney Natatorium. One of the events where his time went up slightly was in the 100 butterfly, in which he touched the wall in 49.53 seconds in Atlanta, up 0.70 seconds from his winning time in Lewisburg. With that time, he would have finished second to Jake Houck of Donegal in the state finals last season.
There’s a chance Shahan could opt against swimming one or both of those events in the WPIAL finals this year. Shahan already made a rare change last year when he opted for the freestyle instead of defending his backstroke title on the second day of the meet, so there is a possibility he could alter his program once again.
“I’m thinking about it and, what that event is, I’m not really sure,” Shahan said. “I might have some things that I might be open to.”
At junior nationals, Shahan swam the 50 freestyle and posted a time of 20.76 seconds, which would have won both WPIAL and state titles last year. Nick Buckley of Huntingdon took home the gold medal with a 21.22.
As he’s preparing for the
WPIAL and PIAA meets in March, he’s also preparing himself to make another important decision: where he wants to swim in college. He has already made official visits to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and to Alabama, and has two more trips planned to Missouri and North Carolina.
And he knows that all of them are watching.
“There’s not a lot of pressure, but you definitely feel kind of a weight when you have to step up and perform to make sure that you’re competing at a top level,” Shahan said. “I think now, with a lot of the recruiting going on for college, it does put a little more stress on, but I’m faster than I was last year and I’m gearing up for my big meets in February and March, so I’m on track for good swims.”