Sophomore Tyler Kominski swims breastroke against Poolesville at Martin Luther King Jr. Indoor Swim Center.

by Cara Farr ‘27

Looking into the end of the season, both the boys and girls swim and dive teams have exciting and important meets coming up. One of the biggest meets during swim season is Metros, which took place on February 6 and 7. The meet includes both public and private schools from all over the DC area, and Olympic athletes, such as Katie Ledecky and Jack Conger, competed at Metros when they were in high school.

Swimmers have to qualify for Metros, ensuring that only the best are competing. This means that there is going to be more competition and higher stakes. “Just getting to Metros is an accomplishment,” said Coach Ryan Burnsky.

Once they qualified, a number of Sherwood swimmers did not just settle for being at Metros. Sophomore Tyler Kominski placed second in the 500 freestyle while setting a school record with a time of 4:28.65, beating the previous record of 4:37.90 by Mike Anderson in 2010. Kominski also set a school record in the 200 freestyle, with a time of 1:42.55, while finishing seventh out of the twenty swimmers who qualified for the finals. Another sophomore, Nick Liberty, finished in the top 10 in the 500 free, and senior Justin Lakso finished 12th in the 50 freestyle. In addition to these three boys swimmers, freshman Mason Maready also qualified for the finals at Metros in two of the events, 200 IM and 100 back. For the girls team, Jill Williams qualified for finals in the 200 IM and 100 fly, as well as junior Corrine Blachere who was in the finals for 100 breast and sophomore Mia Fecko, who finaled in 500 free.

Lots of swimmers achieved a personal best time during this meet, which is a big accomplishment and very hard to do. Sherwood swim and dive showed up and showed out at Metros with the boys team finishing in 14th place out of 54 teams while the girls finished 22nd.

Showing the depth and versatility of the Sherwood swim program, all the relay teams for both boys and girls qualified for finals at Metros. Junior Caleb Alie contributed all season in the breastroke category, as did Junior Calum Jagannathan in butterfly. On the girls side, freshman Allie Velasquez and freshman Kimiko Tonkinon were key swimmers in relays.

Regionals, which took place on President’s Day weekend, is the qualifier for states. Swimmers, once again, must swim a certain time in order to qualify for the States meet, where only the best of the best in the state participate. Sherwood’s division does not host very many MCPS swim teams so they end up competing with many schools from Charles, Frederick, and Anne Arundel Counties. A top challenger coming out of Frederick will be Leonardtown. Looking back to the last 15 years, either Sherwood or Blair have won the region, and it is looking like history is going to repeat itself once again. Sherwood has faced Blair twice this season before regionals, losing both meets by just a few points. This made for a very interesting and competitive race for first place in the 4A/3A North region.