Tomahawk swimmers gearing up for sectional tournament

TOMAHAWK – The Tomahawk Hatchet boys’ swimmers began the season with their coach traveling to Europe, but the team had the great advantage of having two great volunteer coaches in Megan Backes and Kurt DeKiep to keep practices going. In addition, manager Lauren Hansmann knows the ropes when it comes to setting up all the databases.

The team started off the first week of eligibility with three meets in one week.

“We have four brand new swimmers to the sport,” said coach Theresa L’Esperance. “Normally newbies don't start swimming right away, but these four guys challenged themselves to swim at the first meet. We started off with two wins over Antigo and Medford. We saw great swims by the captains, Jack Amelse, Sam Zastrow and Zach Germano. All three of these swimmers are at near personal bests. This shouldn't happen this early in the season, except for when a team comes into the season ready to swim.”

L’Esperance noted that Dane KeKiep has also added some nice pre-tournament times for the year, junior Bruce Peetz is showing some nice sprinting times, considering he has focused most of his swimming career on distance events, and Toby Scott has also improved greatly. 

On Saturday, Dec. 7, the team traveled to the Wisconsin Rapids Invite. Germano and DeKip placed first in the breaststroke and backstroke, a first for the team. In addition, all six relays scored points, another first.

“Newcomers Max Amelse and Connor Germano are the leaders for our B Relays,” L’Esperance stated. “This is highly unusual from the past 15 years. Adding in new freshmen Brock Fischer, Aidan Sigl and Michael Lucas to the team allows the team to have two relays for all our meets. We have one new swimmer, senior Nathan Rosenmeier, (AKA Rosey), who leaped into swimming. He has expressed how hard swimming is compared to other sports, something only past and active swimmers know.”

L’Esperance explained that with the Holidays coming, we will be short some athletes to vacation.

“We will do our best to keep up the winning pace,” she said. “But once the holiday season is over, we will focus on the sectional tournament, the most important meet of all.”