The Riverside-Brookfield girls swimming team celebrated its first-ever invite at the Bulldogs’ new pool with a strong third place showing on Saturday.
Oak Park (356 points) won the seven-team event, followed by Marian Catholic (286), RB (260), Lake Park (253), Leyden (150), Richards (52) and Nazareth (0).
“I think for the first girls’ Invite in our new pool, the meet ran very well,” RB coach Todd Fridrych said. “We had a couple of new teams definitely inquiring about coming back. It was a good day for RB.”
The Bulldogs’ relay teams performed well, particularly in the 200-yard freestyle relay event. Kate Walsh, Stephanie Sauer, Tori Burris and Amanda Gregus won the race by touching the wall at 1:46.38. In the 400-yard freestyle relay, Natalie Benoy, Ally Burke, Walsh and Gregus swam a time of 3:54.62 to finish second.
Gregus, a returning state qualifier in the 100-yard freestyle, took third in that event with a time of 56.42 seconds. The senior also finished third in the 200-yard freestyle (2:04.13).
Benoy, another key returnee from last year’s team, registered a lifetime best of 2:22.14 in the 200-yard individual medley to capture second place. In the 100-yard backstroke, Benoy swam close to another lifetime best (1:05.39) for third.
“Natalie has been swimming out of her mind, which is good,” Fridrych said. “But she still can put in more work to realize her full potential. Amanda and Kate have been working their tails off, Stephanie and Tori, too. These girls are realizing it’s a daily grind and not an every other day thing to achieve our goals.”
The Bulldogs’ goals this season include top three finishes in both conference and sectionals competition. More importantly, Fridrych hopes RB can qualify as many swimmers as possible for state and achieve lifetime best results.
“We’re doing pretty good,” Fridrych said. “A few years ago, I beefed up the schedule allowing our kids to see what good kids swim like. At Hinsdale South, we pulled back and focused more on how our kids were swimming rather than results. Obviously, we wanted our kids to swim well at our invite and they did.”
The key for the rest of the season will be the Bulldogs’ work behind the scenes in practice. Although accomplished swimmers like Lisa Thomas, Katherine Pike and Clare Walsh graduated last year, the Bulldogs still have plenty of talent, including a promising, deep freshman class of swimmers.
The Bulldogs travel to Elmhurst on Saturday to take part in the York Invitational (12 p.m.). Looking ahead to October, RB has a pair of big invites at Sandburg and the Independent Conference Meet on Halloween.