Demarest swimming doing more than staying above water by Cory Doviak of northjerseysports.com
DEMAREST – Northern Valley/Demarest’s boys swimming program made history last season when it tied Bergen Catholic to take a piece of the Bergen County championship and then went on to became the first-ever Bergen County team ever to win out outright state championship as it proved to be the best in Group C.
When something like that happens in a place in where it is not the norm, the program can then go one of two ways. Either it is recognized as a one-off, the product of a four-year cycle in which a group of athletes grow together to create that special season and then disperse, leaving the program to rebuild. Or, as seems to be the case with the Norsemen, that one magical season can lead to more as the remaining swimmers dive in to live up to the standard set by those who have moved on.
And not only is the boys team still thriving with an impressive set of victories on back-to-back nights against Indian Hills and Paramus on Tuesday and Wednesday that raised the Norsemen’s record to 5-0 on the season, the Norsewomen seems to be rising with the tide as well. Demarest’s girls teams is also a perfect 5-0 even though its roster does not include a single senior.
“On the girls side we know that it is something to strive for, said head coach Sam Puso, “[Winning a state championship] can be done. We have seen it.”
Junior Gabrielle Cerbone, sophomores Rachel Woods-Bannon and Alexa O’Connor and freshman Irene Keh have been key contributors to the girls program, which made it to the second round of the state tournament last year, on the rise, the boys program has no designs of vacating the space that it occupied at the end of last season. The Norsemen have now won 18 straight meets, including Tuesday night’s 121-48 win over a talented Indian Hills squad in the Braves’ home pool at the Wyckoff YMCA.
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| Even without a single senior on the roster, Demarest’s girls team is off to a perfect 5-0 start this season. |
Seniors Josh Oh, who recently committed to swim at The College of New Jersey, Lucas Keh and Kevin Shin, juniors Justin Song and Brandon Kim and sophomores Tim Park and Phil Gong have been major point scorers for the Norsemen this season. And then there are others like junior Matt Materic, who only came out of the team for the first time last year, that have helped add quality depth to the program.
When Puso got the job last season it was her first as a varsity head coach of any kind. Her approach is to keep it competitive, but also to keep it light. No matter a particular swimmer’s most proficient stroke, Puso allows her team members to try everything. On any given night, a distance specialist might be doing the back stroke and a sprinter may find him or herself doing a few extra laps. That keeps things interesting for a committed group whose home pool is at least a 45-minute bus ride away at Passaic County Tech and late start times that mean late nights before early wake-ups.
“We do the best job we can of getting the kids on board and the parents, too. We encourage them to go home after school and get their homework done and eat dinner before they get on the bus because we know every meet means a late night. The parents have been so supportive,” said Puso. “It is a commitment, I know that and that is why I get everybody involved.”
The perception of the Demarest program, on the boys side especially, has been raised to the point that now every time they dive off the block, the Norsemen know that the opponent is focused on pulling the upset.
“Now it is more of a strategic game for us because we know that other teams are coming after us and we are the ones with the target on our back. Every meet people are trying to power point us and try to swim their fastest against us. We can’t take a day off and our kids have done a good job of accepting the challenge,” said Puso, who is focusing on each meet as it comes rather than looking at the bigger picture of what it is going to take for her boys team to repeat last season’s state tournament success. “We haven’t even started looking at who else is out there. We are just trying to make sure that we do what we have to do to get enough power points to get a spot in the states and then, once we get there, we will start planning for the state tournament.”