This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Sports

Swimming: Motivated Pleasantville Stands Out

Team wins Division II title; Relay squad earns all-star record.

This summer, Pleasantville's swim team dropped from Division I to Division II in the Northern Westchester Swim Conference. In light of that, Pleasantville coach Tyler Colangelo stressed to his team not to take the competition lightly.

“We were just motivated,” Colangelo said. “I told the team that just because we are moving down to Division II, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are going to have an easier time because there are a lot of good teams in Division II. We stressed it doesn’t matter what division you are in, you have to push hard in order to be successful.”

Pleasantville indeed was successful this summer. It finished 4-1, tying Briarcliff with the best record in Division II. Pleasantville was awarded first place in the division though based on the fact that it won its head to head meeting against Briarcliff 255-237.

Find out what's happening in Pleasantville-Briarcliff Manorwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

One of the big highlights for Pleasantville was at the conference’s all-star swimming meet. That is where in the 8-and-under boys 100-yard free-style relay, Liam McGrinder, Erick Roye, Aidan Lynch and Eli Rosenshine achieved the meet record with a time of 1:07.12

“They were going up against Division I swimmers, most of them who swim year-round,” Colangelo said. “The coaches, we were pretty ecstatic that they won and they were too. To earn a meet record, they couldn’t be more happy.”

Find out what's happening in Pleasantville-Briarcliff Manorwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Pleasantville as a team also fared well in the conference swimming championships, where it placed second to Lakeside. However because of a review of a possible disqualification, Colangelo said that Pleasantville may actually either tie for the championship or win it outright.

“They originally beat us by two,” Colangelo said. “Regardless of what happens, we really did a good job in coming in second.”

Helping Colangelo coach the team to its successful campaign were his assistant coaches Mark Cereste (Byram Hills graduate) who will be a junior at Binghamton, Kazu Asaga (Hackley) a senior at Middlbury, Lauren Pizzolla (Westlake), a junior at Cortland, and Melissa Fanelli (Pleasantville), a junior at UConn.

All four swam in high school. Cereste and Asaga both swim on their respective varsity teams now in college while Pizzolla does club at Cortland.

“That played a big part in us winning,” Colangelo said. “To have people who have been around swimming a lot, who know the technique and what to teach the kids helped the team out immensely.”

“From having friends in college who swim, I know they are working out three hours a day, practicing another two hours in the pool,” Colangelo said. “They know what it takes to be successful.”

Swimmers that Colangelo said stood out for Pleasantville for the season were Rosenshine 8-and-under, Jack Roye (Erick’s brother) 10-and-under, McGrinder 8-and-under, Abigail Finkelberg 12-and-under and Ruan Zorgman, a 16-year-old who competed in the 18-and-under division.

As for next summer, since Pleasantville won Division II, it will move back up to Division I, provided nothing is rescored or changed, Colangelo said.

Before the season, Colangelo said he was happy that his squad had moved down to Division II because many of the teams in Division I have the ability to recruit kids from other towns, making for what he feels is an unfair advantage. That’s because since Pleasantville swims in a town pool, it can only have kids from Pleasantville on the team.

“I am glad we came down to Division II with the kids, who got to experience the whole season of four wins and one loss," Colangelo said. "It boosted their self-confidence. Now we have to go back up and we will see what happens. Maybe with Division I being more competitive, it will give us a push.”

At the village board meeting of Aug. 8, Trustee Mindy Berard commended the team for a successful season, highlighting records broken and a tremendous showing at the .

"It was a very exciting season," she said.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?