General boys look to extend title run, girls look to bounce back on top of OCC standings

  • brian questel
  • January 5, 2012
  • 335
                        
010912 OCCswimpreview Promo: Fresh off NEAC title swims, Generals remain home to host OCC Championships General boys look to extend title run, girls look to bounce back on top of OCC standings By Brian Questel The Wooster High swim teams are hoping a little home cooking will be a big help at this championship time of year. Wooster is hosting the Northeast Aquatic Conference Championships Jan. 6-7 at Ellen Shapiro Natatorium and will turn around to host the Ohio Cardinal Championships a week later on Jan. 13-14. It may not be ideal to go back-to-back with a pair of championship meets, but both teams have gotten used to the double duty. “We’ve been doing it that way since we’ve been in the OCC,” said boys’ coach Jeff DeHaan, who has learned to deal with the back-to-back meets. “The Federal League was all duals and OCC is a championship meet. This is the ninth year we’ve done it, so it’s old hat now. It’s something we incorporate into our training session. We have it planned out start to finish all year and it’s part of our training. “We swim though it. Friday mornings we do weight training and Friday afternoon before they do the diving we’ll do a 2- or 3,000-yard set. We’re not really backing off, but we’re not killing them the night before the meet. Backing off a half-practice will not hurt us in the long run.” “It’s not fun,” said girls’ coach Chris Matthew. “Ultimately we can’t control (the scheduling). We usually swim better in the NCACs than the OCCs. I hope this year we’ll have a little more room to play around and vary the events the girls swim a little bit. I can score the same and switch them around. “Our goal is to win it. I’m not going to do anything stupid (with the lineup) for the sake of the girls not swimming the same events. We’re looking forward to it. The girls worked their butts off over break. We did a lot of yardage and a lot of dry-land (conditioning) … more than in the past. We had three meets over break and we were tired, but we’re tired every meet. I’m looking for some breakout times (in these meets).” The boys have won all eight OCC championship meets, while the girls have won six of the eight titles. For the Generals to come out on top in both races it will boil down to the depth both teams put in the water. “Ashland has some tough swimmers,” said DeHaan. “The dual meet (a Wooster win) showed our depth, but they won some events. … We’ll have competition from Ashland, Senior and Lexington. It’s a matter of us continuing our tradition of the depth of our team to pull it out. Our goal is to have our top three in the top 10. … If we can get all three in the top 10, we have a good chance to pull it off. “Jacob (Ackerman) was the 100 fly champ and he’ll try to repeat in that,” added DeHaan. “We won only three events last year – the 200 free, 100 fly and the 100 breast. Our depth won that meet.” “I think Ashland and Mansfield have good swimmers and Lexington always swims out of its mind. They step up to the plate and swim some fast times (at OCC),” said Matthew, whose team saw a streak of five straight OCC titles snapped by Lady Lex last year. “This year we have three divers and last year we only had one, and overall we have more depth across the board. “We only lost by 14 points last year. We’re looking to compete for the title.” The diving portion of the meet will be held Friday evening at 6 p.m., with the swimming opening at 10 a.m. Saturday.


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