The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School boys swim team made history this past weekend, scoring more points than any previous Vineyard team at the MIAA South Sectional championships on Sunday.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies Zesiger Center Pool, the Vineyard team earned 21 points and placed 26th out of 41 teams.
With standout performances, personal bests, and school records broken, numerous swimmers on the Island team placed for next weekend’s state championship.
“It was a pretty phenomenal race outcome,” said head coach Jen Passafiueme on Monday. “They have been working really hard, and it paid off.”
The 200-yard medley relay kicked off the day. Grady Stalgren, the lead swimmer in the relay for the backstroke leg, dropped two seconds for a new personal best of 28.28 seconds setting the team off to a great start. Next was Michael Calheta in the breaststroke who also dropped two seconds and swam a personal best of 32.95 seconds. Ronan Mullin, in the butterfly, swam in 25.08 then Kaua De Assis swam a 22.82 free split and the boys ended up dropping 3.72 seconds from their previous time, enough time to land them a position in the state championship. It turns out it was also enough to break the previous school record set last year by Andy Carr, Simon Hammarlund, De Assis, and Emmett Silva.
Junior Vineyard swimmer Mullin swam in two events solo, the 200-yard inter-medley and the 100-yard butterfly. In his 200 IM, he already qualified for states in the event. Exploding off the block, he dropped 2.81 seconds for a new personal best and 11th placing out of 22 swimmers, earning the Vineyarders six points.
Then, in the 100-yard butterfly, Mullin went on to break a long-standing school record previously held by Evan Sauter, set in 2018. Mullin swam the butterfly in 55.37 seconds, breaking Evans record by only a 100th-of-a-second, placing 16th out of 32 and earning another point for the Vineyard swim team.
Next was De Assis who was solo in the 50-yard freestyle as well as the 100-yard freestyle. In the 50-yard, De Assis swam a 23.30 and placed 17 out of 37 swimmers. In the 100-yard he swam a 51.13 and placed 13th out of 30 swimmers, earning the Vineyard another four points.
Last up for the Vineyarders was the 200-yard freestyle relay. They still needed to drop just over a second if they wanted to qualify for state championships next weekend. Mullin started the team strong with a fast split of 24.38 seconds. Eighth grader Moses Thomson was next with a personal best split of 25.09 followed by Anthony Pruciano who dropped two seconds for a personal best at 24.99 seconds and De Assis with 23.08. The team overall dropped 1.52 seconds from their seed time and qualified for states, finishing 12th out of 30 teams, earning another 10 points for Martha’s vineyard.
The freestyle relay is also less than a second away from a school record, which they will be pushing to break at the states.
Coach Passafiume said while they are in a good position this week, they will be getting more technical and stronger for the weekend.
“I think they are swimming solid and fast,” said Passafiume. “We are going to look to work a little more on the technical pieces, starts and turns, if there’s anywhere we can drop a little bit of time — it’s those two things, getting off the block a little stronger [and] really hitting those turns fast.”
“We also have some dry land workouts today so we can build up some strength, then taper out for the end of the weekend with some focus on technical pieces,” the coach said.
The state championships will be held at Boston University on Sunday.
