Swimming: Pleasantville Has Fun in Division II

After many years competing in Division I of the Northern Westchester Swim Conference, Pleasantville moved down to Division II this summer.

There is a good reason for that, according to 2007 graduate and recent Bucknell grad, Coach Tyler Colangelo, who swam for four years on the varsity in high school.

“We were in Division I last year and Pleasantville had been in Division I for a long, long time,” Colangelo said. “But Division I has become very competitive, where you have these private pools where anyone can be on the team.”

That is not the case for Pleasantville.

“We are strictly all from Pleasantville and moving down to Division II, I can see the difference already,” Colangelo said. “It’s a lot more laid back, a lot more fun for the kids. The competitiveness is still there, but it’s just a lot more doable.”

The move to Division II has paid off so far as Pleasantville has started out the summer 3-1. Pleasantville began the season with a 259-225 victory against visiting Cortlandt, before losing 253-242 at Lewisboro.

The team then rebounded with a 253-206 triumph against A.L. Ehrman. On Saturday, Pleasantville had another victory at , 255-237.

Helping Colangelo coach the team to those victories is 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.

This is a quartet of coaches that has swum all their lives, according to Colangelo.

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

“It’s great because in college they learn about such technique and stroke,” Colangelo said. “Then they come back and teach the kids what they have learned in college. Anyone can take a WSI (Water Safety Instructor) course and be able to teach these kids the basics, but when you have college kids that come back and have been swimming all their lives, they know these techniques, the little tricks that can really help the kids improve their stroke.”

Colangelo estimates he has been working on his stroke since he was 7- or 8-years-old, when he first started swimming for the Pleasantville NWSC squad.

He eventually went from swimmer to coach, becoming the full-head coach this year, after being a co-head coach in ’09 and an assistant for three seasons prior to that.

“It’s something I can’t get away from,” Colangelo said. “And the kids, especially the little kids, I love working with them.”

The ages of those kids he works with range from 4 to 18. The program has 107 swimmers total.

“It’s all about getting the kids in the water, swimming against people you would normally not swim against,” Colangelo said. “The most important thing is that it’s supposed to be fun. It’s about getting kids in the water and enjoying themselves and getting ribbons and trophies at the end of each race.”