After an eight-year winning streak, including last year’s co-championship title with the Brooklyn Technical High School Engineers, the Pirates, the boys’ swimming and diving team, was brought to a stop by Brooklyn Tech on Tuesday, February 5 in the semifinal round of post-season swimming.
Finishing with a narrow score of 53-49 in playoff semifinals, the historic outcome will allow either Brooklyn Tech or Fort Hamilton to capture a new City Championship title.
Despite the loss, the Pirates and their coach, Peter Bologna, remain positive. “We had a lot of kids swim their best times of the season,” Bologna said. Most notably, sophomore John Connuck, had a narrow second place finish in his 100-yard butterfly. Connuck finished 1.39 seconds behind junior and Engineer Eoghan Leddy, who swam a time of 57.16 seconds.
“We weren’t sad,” senior Brendan McDonald said. “We were disappointed, but we have no regrets.”
Freshman Stefan Garcia, who swam both the 200-yard and 100-yard freestyle events, finished first and second respectively. In his first season with the team, senior Brendan McDonald swam personal records in the 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard breast stroke.
The last event of the evening, the 400-yard freestyle relay, was the determining factor in the outcome. The Pirates needed to win in order to tie the meet with the Engineers. Instead, Stuyvesant’s relay teams finished second and third, while Brooklyn Tech’s “A” relay team finished first with a time of 3:33.45, five seconds faster than the second-place team.
In spite of the loss, the Pirates held practices for another week in order to train for the Open Championships, held on Sunday, February 10. Here, they rallied for an 80-point victory. The event is not organized as a tournament with a bracket, as playoffs are. It is more of a round-robin in that all teams with qualifying swimmers are invited to attend and compete.Placing four swimmers in each preliminary event, the team managed to have at least one entry in every event at the finals. With each swimmer gaining points according to their finishing rank, Stuyvesant’s cumulative score was 80 points greater than that of any other high school, securing them the championship. The Pirates had won Open Championships for the past 13 years. This year turned out to be no exception as Stuyvesant defeated swimmers from public schools all over the city, including Brooklyn Tech. The Pirates were glad they continued this tradition.
“It feels good to pull one out and not give up both legacies,” Bologna said. He does not view their failure to win the City Championships as an indication of a sub-par season. “It was definitely a bench marker season. We worked very hard, and this was possibly the most productive team I’ve had.”