Sports: Fitch’s Alex Doerwaldt is The Day’s All-Area Boys’ Swimming Athlete of the Year
Alex Doerwaldt has an affinity for the water, all right, chipping in three victories for Fitch co-op at ECC championship meet
Alex Doerwaldt's parents moved back to southeastern Connecticut — his mom, Jennifer, was a Stonington High School graduate — so they could raise their family by the ocean. But it wasn't the fresh, salt air or the scenery which drew Doerwaldt to the water. It was the competition. "I loved the thrill of racing since I was really little," he said recently. "Seven years old. I belonged to the Westerly (YMCA) Dolphins. One side of the pool to the other (for races). I started out with just the regular front crawl, freestyle."
Doerwaldt, now a 6-foot-1 sophomore competing for the Fitch/ Stonington/Ledyard/ New London/Wheeler cooperative swim team at the high school level, has continued to be lured by competition. Currently unable to swim due to the spread of COVID-19 across the nation, he and older brother Harmut are training on land — up to four hours per day — for the time they will be able to get back in the water.
Doerwaldt competes each fall in the International Swim Coaches' Association East Coast Open Water Championships at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, planning to take on the three-mile event this year, which requires a whole different reservoir of determination.
And then there was the matter of the Eastern Connecticut Conference championship on Feb. 29 at UConn Avery Point, in which Doerwaldt was named Swimmer of the Meet following a record-setting performance in the 100-yard breaststroke to go along with a pair of relay victories.
A student at the Marine Science Magnet High School, meaning that he swims for his home district of Stonington, Doerwaldt was named The Day's 2020 All-Area Swimmer of the Year.
Doerwaldt, showcasing his endurance, earned victories in three of the final four events of the ECC meet, perhaps spurred by the disappointment of finishing second to East
Lyme junior Ryan Goolsbey in the 500 freestyle (4:53.65-4:56.64) moments before.
Doerwaldt followed the runner-up finish by swimming the anchor leg of Fitch's winning 200-yard freestyle relay team which finished in 1:32.03, one one-hundredth of a second ahead of East Lyme, joining Michael Urgo, AJ Murko and Matt Nowak.
Two races later he broke the meet record in the breaststroke in 59.38 seconds, topping Fitch graduate John Marcolina's record of 1:00.07, set last year. And to cap the meet, Urgo, Murko, Harmut Doerwaldt and Alex Doerwaldt won the 400 freestyle relay in 3:21.31.
Only individual races count in figuring Swimmer of the Meet honors, but the record-setting breaststroke performance was enough of a weight to earn Doerwaldt, in his first year swimming for the Fitch co-op, that distinction.
"He has an incredible heart for competition," Fitch coach Katey Kokomoor said. "... He had the heart to go on for five minutes (in the 500). He really wanted that 500. He was disappointed he didn't get it but he reacted by taking his disappointment and rolling it into success. It takes true strength of character.
"He had very little rest. That 200 free relay was coming out of the 500. He gave it all. You could see his hard work ethic and training gave him the endurance to do that."
Fitch, which finished second at the ECC meet as a team behind East Lyme, did not get the opportunity to compete at the state level due to the cancellation of all remaining CIAC postseason events on March 10.
"I think the main mindset for me (at the ECC meet) was that I had lost the 500 freestyle right before," Doerwaldt said. "I got second and (Goolsbey) got first."
Interestingly, when it came to the breaststroke, Marcolina was in attendance as Doerwaldt broke his record. Doerwaldt said the two are friendly from club competition.
"A funny kind of pattern happened. Last year, he and I, we were both good friends. We were there and I watched him break (the record)," Doerwaldt said. "This year John was there and so was another graduated senior. This year John and him both watched me break it. I looked up at him and he looked down at me. We both smiled."
Doerwaldt attended The Williams School from sixth grade through ninth. He expected to attend Stonington this year along with his brother, but found out just before school started that he received a lottery slot to go to Marine Science Magnet.
"At first I actually didn't want to go," he said. "I thought it would only be geared to ocean stuff. I found out it's a normal school but with really great teachers. The students all seem to understand each other. It's a lot more like a team-building kind of school."
Any nerves he had about joining the Fitch team were also assuaged.
"Actually the funny thing was that a lot of the kids, a fair amount of kids on the Fitch team had swum for the clubs that I swam with. And the rest of boys were nice and we got along," Doerwaldt said. "At first I was kind of nervous. That faded away after my first practice."
Doerwaldt competes at the club level for Bulldog Swimming out of Yale. He hopes to continue swimming at the collegiate level and perhaps beyond, keeping an Olympic berth someday in mind.
Kokomoor wasn't surprised at all to learn the amount of time Doerwaldt has been working out to maintain his strength outside the pool.
"He had a consistently very good season the whole season," Kokomoor said. "You could tell, No. 1, he's a very hard worker and, No. 2, you could see the strength coming out and the speed coming out." v.fulkerson@theday.com