Girls’ and Boys’ Swim Teams Split Meet at Morristown

MORRISTOWN — The Chatham girls' swim team improved to 7-1 on the year with a win over Morristown High School, 102-68. But the boys were not so lucky.

The boys' swim team came close to defeating the No. 18 team in the Star-Ledger Top 20 but eventually fell, 90-80, to Morristown on Thursday.

"This is a meet that we knew coming into would be a very close meet both for the girls and the boys," Coach Dave Steele said. "[Morristown Head Coach Donna Gelegonya] and her coaching staff always have a team that's ready to go so we knew it would be a good opportunity for us to see how we're doing so far this year."

The girls' team came into the meet ranked No. 9 in the Star-Ledger Top 20 and placed first in eight of the 11 events.

Junior Anne Trojanowski led the way for the Cougars with two individual first-place finishes in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events. She also swam the second leg of the winning 400-yard freestyle relay team along with sophomores Julia Harrigan, Kate Buchser and Taryn McLaughlin.

"It was a big deal because I know Morristown's a really good team and really strong, so it was exciting," Trojanowski said of her three first-place finishes.

While the boys weren't able to get the win, junior Michael Strand had a strong showing. He placed first individually in the 50- and 100- yard freestyle events (24.46 and 54.68) and as a member of the 200- and 400-yard freestyle relay teams with times of 1:56.47 and 3:51.58, respectively.

Both the boys' and girls' teams qualified swimmers for the New Jersey State Meet of Champions in the 500-yard freestyle relay. Trojanowski, senior captain Chelsea Allocco and freshman Evan O'Hara qualified for the girls' team and senior captain Kevin Greener and Brendan Miller-Radest qualified for the boys' team.

Despite the boys' loss, which dropped them to 3-4 on the season, Steele has a good outlook for both teams.

"Coming off the holiday break and being about halfway through the season, we always like to take a temperature check to see where we're at," he said. "Both teams are very pleased [with] what they did today and it sets us up for the remainder of the season."

Steele said the team faces difficult competition the next couple of weeks with tough meets against Kinnelon High School on Tuesday and Mendham High School next Thursday, but this meet helped the swimmers prepare.

"What we'll be doing is swimming through those weeks, hopefully doing well with those [meets] and getting ready for the state tournament," he said.