The Milan News-Leader
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Good year, bad break
Heikka happy with 12th after Big Reds on verge of top-10
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: March 13, 2008
The Milan boys' swim team came as close as they possibly could to a second straight top-10 finish before finishing 12th at Saturday's Division 3 state meet in Holland.
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But for head coach Dan Heikka, after a tremendously satisfying season that saw new talent develop and its returning stars continue to shine, the Big Reds came close enough.
"It really doesn't matter to us that much," Heikka said. "We would have liked to have finished in the top-10, but we've had such a great year. It's been a complete team effort. I'm really proud of these guys and the season they've had."
The Big Reds had positioned themselves for ninth place entering the final event of Saturday's finals, the 400-yard freestyle relay. Ian Pendleton, Justin Beaudrie, Kray Cornelison, and Tim Hochradel had combined to swim a season-best 3:23.40 in Friday's preliminaries, good for ninth, and a repeat of that performance Saturday would put Milan into the top-10.
Unfortunately for the Big Reds, the relay suffered a disqualification and received no points for the event, leaving Milan stuck at 68 points, one behind 11th-place St. Joseph.
"That's the nature of the sport," Heikka said, adding that the disqualification came about after a "coaching mistake on my part."
"We swam well enough for ninth," he said, "but there's no asterisk. We finished 12th. The guys took it pretty hard. It's tough to pour that much effort into something and have it not work out. But that's the way it goes. Mistakes happen, and you move on."
Despite the frustration of the "DQ," Milan had several performances to look back on with pride. The Big Reds' best finish came in the 200 freestyle relay, where Beaudrie, Matt Smith, Pendleton, and Cornelison swam 1:32.04 to take fourth place and All-State honors.
Pendleton, a senior, took two more medals with a pair of top-10 finishes: sixth in the 100 freestyle in 48.90 and ninth in the 50 freestyle in 22.48.
"I know Ian was disappointed he didn't finish higher," Heikka said, "but he gave it everything he had. He swam very well, as hard as he could.
Cornelison, a junior, snuck into the top 10 with a time of 22.64 in the 50 freestyle, placing him one spot behind his teammate. But even outside the top 10, the Big Reds repeatedly put together their best times of the season and, in many cases, their career. Junior Hochradel scored in both the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle, swimming 1:51.55 for 13th in the 200 and 5:05.64 for 14th in the 500. One slot behind him in the 500 freestyle was senior Zach Olson swimming a career-best 5:09.26. Olson also swam a personal-best 1:54.79 in the 200 freestyle preliminaries, good for 25th.
The Big Reds' freshman-laden 200 medley relay team of Cornelison, Tyler DiGesare, Tyler Fisher, and Dylan Shearer swam 1:49.68 for 26th in the event's preliminaries.
"DiGesare and Cornelison had their best splits in that relay, Cornelison dropped two-tenths of a second off his 50 freestyle, Hochradel dropped a couple of seconds off his 200 time," Heikka said. "We just had a bunch of great swims."
Regardless of the final outcome of the meet, Heikka felt his seniors — Beaudrie, Pendleton, Olson, and Smith — had done more than enough to finish their Milan careers with their head held high.
"I'm so proud of everything they've accomplished," he said. "You look at Justin Beaudrie and Matt Smith, they didn't have the chance to swim an individual event but that fourth in the 200 freestyle just doesn't happen without them. They're the consummate team leaders, the consummate team players, and I was excited for all of them."
Heikka has been bullish on the prospects for the Big Reds' future, but he said that those prospects might best be fulfilled if those future squads took their cue from the togetherness and balance that marked the 2008 team.
"The last couple of years, we've finished 12th and 10th but we've been buoyed by one superstar," he said. "This year, a lot of different guys scored in a lot of different events. We had some big surprises. This year, I think we did it more as a team."
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