ARMY SWIMMING & Spring 2017 DIVING A New Sheriff in Town? Not Just Yet By Tom Slear, 73 The smart money in the finals of the women s 400 IM at the Patriot League Championships was on Navy s Kaitlyn O Reilly over Army s top-seeded Bridget Ritter. Though Ritter qualified two seconds faster, O Reilly won the event the previous year in a time four seconds faster than Ritter s best. And O Reilly was swimming well. The night before she had lowered her best time a half second in the 200 IM. Ritter, on the other hand, had faded at the end of the 500 free and finished seventh after qualifying second. What s more, Navy swimmers had taken on an aura of dominance the last few years much like the New England Patriots. They were expected to win and most often they did. Junior Bridget Ritter - Patriot League 400 IM champion Ritter, however, wasn t intimidated. Instead of worrying after the 500 free, she learned from it. She had fallen into the common trap of swimming someone else s race. Usually strong in the back half of her races, she let two Navy swimmers take her out too fast. Her last 100 was over two seconds slower than in the preliminaries. I wasn t going to let that happen again, she said. I wanted to be at her (O Reilly s) feet at the end of the breaststroke and then I would win it. Ritter followed her plan precisely. She was a body length behind O Reilly going into the freestyle leg and ended up beating her by three seconds in Academy record time. Those in the overflowing crowd at Bucknell s Kinney Natatorium who followed Patriot League swimming closely witnessed something they hadn t seen in quite some time: a Navy beatdown. In this Issue: New Academy Records..2 Wrestler/Diver..3 All League/All Academic...5 Branch Selections/First Assignments.5 Alumni Connection.6 It happened again a few minutes later. Navy s Brayden Lauffer had set a meet and league record in the 400 IM preliminaries. Army sophomore Jay Yang qualified second, tightening up noticeably during the freestyle leg and finishing three seconds off his best time and six seconds behind Lauffer. Yang s chances in the final appeared to rank only slightly higher than a snowball in July. But like Ritter, Yang refused to be cowed. In the final he saved himself a bit during the butterfly and Lauffer held off too much during the Page 1
breaststroke. Yang was ahead by more than a body length going into the freestyle. Lauffer sprinted mightily but Yang held him off, breaking his own Academy record in the process. Twice within 30 minutes Army exposed Navy as vulnerable. Had a new sheriff taken over? Not yet. With their insurmountable depth, the Navy women won handily, leaving Army in second place by over 300 points. The Army men were much closer. Only 60 points separated them from Navy, the baseball equivalent of a one-run loss. Despite the second places, the clear indication was that Army swimming and diving had turned a corner. The difference this year from my first three years was that we actually believed we could win, says Army men s captain Devin McCall. We swam this year with so much more confidence. Other Army swimmers echoed McCall s assessment. This newfound belief exhibited itself throughout the season in and out of the pool. Most noticeable, the coaches intensified the training and the swimmers responded. We trained harder than we ever had before, says Ritter, a junior. There was more volume, more time in the water, more lifts. The training trip (to Florida after Christmas) was insanely hard and I loved every minute of it. Mental toughness came into play as well. Academy Records from the Patriot League Championships Men 50 Back Josh Sembrano, 22.30 (22.39, Sembrano, 2016) 500 Free Tom Ottman, 4:22.63 (4:24.99, Matheson, 1990) 1650 free Tom Ottman, 15:16.32 (15:16.95 Ottman, 2016) 200 IM Peter Mikheyev, 1:47.18 (1:48.44, Mikheyev, 2016) 400 IM Jay Yang, 3:49.51 (3:50.04, Yang, 2016) 800 Free Relay 6:31.41 (6:33.27, 2016) Peter Mikheyev (1:38.75) Evin Rude (1:36.56) Sean Martin (1:37.68) Devin McCall (1:38.42) 400 Medley Relay - 3:13.35 (3:13.89, 2015) Josh Sembrano (48.52) Joe Daniels (53.49) Sean Regan (47.73) Evin Rude (43.61) Women 100 back Kelly Hamilton, 53.23* (54.10, Hamilton, 2016) 400 IM Bridget Ritter, 4:17.82 (4:21.05, Ritter, 2015) 400 Medley Relay 3:41.34 (3:43.89, 2016) Kelly Hamilton (53.23) Kara Wineinger (1:03.37) Jo Marsh (55.47) Monica Sowinski (49.27) *Patriot League record Other years it was more about having fun with swimming, says McCall. That s not necessarily a bad thing, but it s not the best thing for being the best team in the Patriot League. This year everyone was more focused on bettering themselves as swimmers. The first day of the four-day championships could not have gone better for the Army men s team. The Navy anchor in the 200 medley relay left early and handed the cadets a 40-point advantage. A short time later, Army took first in the 800 free relay, improving the Academy record by two seconds. At the end of the night Army led with 80 points, eight places and 46 points ahead of Navy. Page 2
Army won the three individual swimming events the second day and finished just behind Navy in the 400 medley relay. Plebe Hudson Kay was second in the one-meter diving. Yet the midshipmen ended the day ahead, 275 246, capitalizing on their mountain of depth. Army sophomore Tom Ottman won the 500 free only to have Navy place four in the top eight and come away with 30 more points. Even when Army displayed some depth of its own, such as when Yang won the 400 IM and male rookie-of-the-meet and 200 IM champion Peter Mikheyev finished third, Navy matched Army s points. It s not common for diving to take on late comers, but not unheard of. Typically, it s a gymnast who decides at 15 or 16 that she (or he) has had enough of painful falls and bone breaking slips. Jorie Mason is a case in point. She was a gymnast in high school and switched to diving as a sophomore last year at West Point (and was a consolation finalist the last two years at the Patriot League Championships). But a wrestler? Senior Eddy Emery came to West Point a wrestler and will graduate a diver. Nevertheless, Head Coach Mickey Wender was confident heading into the finals the last day that his men would overcome a 34-point deficit. I really believe we can do it, he said to anyone within earshot. Coach s optimism was no surprise. His nickname should be Blue Sky. Yet Army did have a chance if everything everything went just right and Navy made a few mistakes. Though Ottman, Yang and senior Clay Harmon finished first, third, and seventh in the mile and outscored Navy by 21, and Army won the 200 fly and placed two others in the final to outscore Navy by 10, the outcome was settled in the next to last event when Navy s divers performed brilliantly in the three-meter and finished first, second and third. Final score: Navy 846, Army 786. Army ended up with six individual swimming titles, two more than Navy and the most since 2001. That took some of the sting out of the loss and boosted Wender to men s coach-ofthe-year honors. The women s title was never in doubt. After the first day Navy was behind Boston Firstie Eddy Emery tried diving for three months while a sophomore in high school when an injury kept him temporarily from his first love. The next year he was back to wrestling and won state titles in South Carolina as a junior and senior. Telltale signs of his background remain: broad shoulders, powerful legs, zero body fat. Make an aggressive move and he d take you down in a nanosecond. But his motivation for wrestling evaporated soon after he arrived at West Point. The bane of the sport making weight was tough enough in high school. He didn t think he could handle it at Army with its one-two punch of academics and military duties. So, why not give diving a try? Ron Kontura, the diving coach at the time, saw potential. You re the clay and I ll be the molder, he told Emery. He pushed me hard, Emery recalls. He threw a lot of dives at me. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn t, and it was painful when it didn t. By his sophomore year it had worked well enough that he advanced to the consolation finals in the one- and three-meter at the Patriot League Championships. He has improved his finishes each year since. Talent, current diving coach PJ Hughes explains. He s a gifted athlete. Couldn t be happier the way things turned out, Emery says. I ve really liked the team. After graduation he will take another unconventional route: naval aviation. Go Army, fly Navy, he says. Page 3
University and Army only because BU won the three-meter diving and placed two others in the final while Army plebe Serica Hallstead finished third with an NCAA zone qualifying score and classmate Kathryn Seyer finished seventh. After a full slate of swimming events the second day, Navy was ahead by 60 and the race for second was on among Army, BU, and Lehigh. Senior Sean Regan - Patriot League champion in the 200 fly Army prevailed by 9.5 points over Lehigh and 22.5 points over BU. Before last year, the Army women hadn t finished second since 1998. Now they had done it two years in a row. Army senior Kelly Hamilton provided arguably the swim of the meet when she made the most of her underwater dolphin kicks to led off the 400 medley relay with a 53.23, crushing her Academy record in the 100 back and rewriting the league and meet records. (She went on to win the 100 back and finish second in the 50 free.) I always tell myself a time is just a number and I can get any number I want, she said shortly after the race. But when I first saw the 53.2, it was like an out of body experience. I can t believe my arms and legs went that fast. Army produced many other fast swims and encouraging results this season. The men and women went 8 3 and 7 4, respectively, with a schedule comprising more heft than in recent years. The men took Navy to the last relay in the dual meet in December, the closest they have come to beating the midshipmen since 1993. The men and women broke 16 of the 30 individual Academy records and four of the 10 relay records. Eight men and women made the all-league first teams and another 10 made the second teams. Two divers qualified for the NCAA Zone Championships. Yet all the talk of records and scores risks obscuring a major point Sean Regan touched on a few hours before the final race of his swimming career. When asked what was on his mind, he didn t mention the upcoming final in the 200 fly, which he would win, or the numerous times he had broken the Academy record over his four years at West Point. Rather, he talked about waking up the next day and no longer having swimming to fall back on for exercise, for identity, for comradery. Something he had done most days since he was six would be over and that scared him. But it also reminded him how much he enjoyed his competitive career, in particular the four years swimming for Army, the loses to Navy notwithstanding. Senior Kelly Hamilton set Academy, league, and championship records in the 100 back at the Patriot League Championships I wouldn t have done it any other way, he said. I loved it here - all four years. Page 4
Army s All-Patriot League Swimmers and Divers (All selections were based on performances in individual events at the Patriot League Championships. Winners and runners up automatically earned spots on the first and second teams. Others were chosen based on points earned in the championships. Typically, 18 men and 18 women are named to the first teams and the same number to the second teams, but this year due to ties in the voting, 21 women are on the second team.) First Team Second Team Men Women Men Women Tom Ottman ( 19) Kelly Hamilton ( 17) Joe Daniels ( 17) Jess Burkett ( 17) Brandan McCredie ( 19) Peter Mikheyev ( 20) Sean Regan ( 17) Evin Rude ( 18) Jay Yang ( 19) Bridget Ritter ( 18) Hudson Kay ( 20) Devin McCall ( 17) Matt McPheters ( 19) Jason Rodriguez ( 18) Josh Sembrano ( 18) Serica Hallstead ( 20) Jo Marsh ( 20) Monica Sowinski ( 19) Academic All-Patriot League (Selections were made from the sophomore, junior, and senior swimmers and divers who competed in the Patriot League Championships and have a cumulative GPA of at least a 3.2. Ten men and ten women total were chosen from the league s 10 schools. Kelly Hamilton was named the women s scholar athlete of the year.) Kelly Hamilton ( 17) 3.696, Kinesiology Kara Wineinger ( 19) 4.088, Mathematical Science Tom Ottman ( 19) 3.511, Physics Clay Harmon ( 17) 3.914, Mechanical Engineering Branch Selections/First Assignments, Class of 17 Jess Burkett Adjutant General - Schofield Barracks, Hawaii Joe Daniels Quartermaster Fort Sill, Oklahoma Eddie Emery Naval Aviation Pensacola, Florida Hannah Grosso Military Intelligence Fort Richardson, Alaska Clay Harmon Engineers Germany Devin McCall Air Defense Artillery Fort Bliss, Texas Dan Mo Armor Fort Hood, Texas Danielle Nuszkowski Engineers Schofield Barracks, Hawaii Sean Regan Field Artillery Fort Hood, Texas Claire Willis Transportation Fort Bragg, North Carolina Kelly Hamilton Medical Service Corps Korea Page 5
Alumni Connection Fathers and sons came together for a picture following the Army-Lehigh dual meet in January at West Point. To the left are Lehigh junior Zach Tieke and his father Brad, a 1990 Army graduate. On the right are Sean Martin, a sophomore at West Point, and his father, Andy, a 1985 graduate. Ray Bosse ( 77) is in the middle. He coached both Brad and Andy when they swam at Army. Army won the meet, but in the battle of offspring, Zach did his dad proud, beating Sean in the 100 and 200 free. A month later in the Patriot League Championships, Sean got a measure of revenge, finishing ahead of Zach in the 50 and 200 free. Zach placed ahead in the 100 free. The senior Tieke was a sprinter at Army and a member of the 1990 team that beat Harvard and Navy on the road on consecutive weekends and upset Columbia. They were a tough group, Bosse recalls. (The team captain of that group, Al Anderson, is featured on page nine.) Brad led off the 400 free relays that beat Navy and got us a win over Columbia, which was undefeated at the time. Brad was also on the 200 free relay that held the Academy record. After five years on active duty, he embarked on a career in business and currently works for Unilever in the Chicago area, where he lives with his wife and family. Andy was one of four Martin brothers who graduated from West Point from 1975 through 1985. Paul ( 80) and Ted ( 83) were swimmers. Andy shared the Dorothy Skippie Award with Joe Hojnacki ( 85) as the team s most valuable plebes in 1982. He was the Eastern champion in the 100 back his junior year and the team captain his senior year. Commissioned in the infantry, he served four years at Fort Campbell with the 101st Airborne Division before transferring to military intelligence. The next 22 years included tours in Bosnia and Iraq working in counterintelligence. He retired from active duty in 2011 as a colonel and now works in private industry. He lives in Crownsville, Maryland, with Maura, his wife of 31 years. They have two children in addition to Sean. Maureen works for the National Science Foundation and Kathryn ( 14) is a military police officer. Andy s salient memory of swimming at West Point was beating Navy in 1984 and the sacrifice of an assistant coach on the swimmers and divers behalf. As Andy writes: It was the second time we had swum Navy in Lejeune Hall. We hadn t beaten Navy in four years. After Coach Ryan finished his pep talk and we were getting ready to walk on the deck, George Hooper, the assistant coach, stood up to say something to Page 6
Alumni Connection George Hooper before... and after motivate us. I don t remember what he said, but after he was done, he whipped off his hat to reveal he had shaved the top of his head. He looked like Bozo the Clown. The team let out a roar, went out on the deck and beat Navy. George had his hat off the entire meet. It must have been very disconcerting to the Navy team to have Bozo the Clown walking the deck. It was great. I am sure that George didn t get a date for months. Never has one man given so much to the Army cause. For his part, Hooper thought he looked distinguished and insists his social life didn t suffer. Though his girlfriend, Charlotte, was aghast at the sight of his shiny dome, she didn t dump him. She married him. I can remember all of that like it was yesterday, he says. I thought it was the one thing extra I could do to help beat Navy. I didn t tell anyone about it. When I took the hat off, they just screamed. Coaching at West Point were six of the most wonderful years of my life, he recalls. I think about those guys all of the time. Hooper and Charlotte live in upstate New York. He has been a counselor with the state Department of Corrections for the last 29 years and a part-time swim coach almost throughout. He and Charlotte have a daughter, Aimee, who swam at James Madison University, and a son, Nick, a senior swimmer at the University of Buffalo. Page 7
Alumni Connection After years of working for a living, George Hillard ( 64) bought a sports car and has been racing it on various tracks throughout the United States. But don t expect to see him on television anytime soon. As he says, I am not actually in racing. It looks like racing, but by definition it is not. It s High Performance Driving Experience, or HPDE. HPDE includes classroom instruction and time on the track. Drivers progress from Group 1 to Group 4. George hopes to move into Group 3 this spring. Nevertheless, he s driven on many well-known domestic race tracks, including Daytona. George Hillard getting some High Performance Driving Experience It was intimidating initially, he says. But after the first session, it was really fun. My car s top speed is 120 miles per hour. It s not very aerodynamic, but it has lots of power for a 1,250-pound car. The most scary part is the Interstate system getting to the tracks like driving through Atlanta. George spent two tours in Vietnam after graduation and then went to graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill before returning to West Point to teach English and coach swimming and water polo. Following a subsequent assignment with the 3rd Infantry Division in Germany, he left active duty and took a job with a global chemical company as a training and human resources manager. They sent me overseas more than the Army, he says. I d get a call: Giorgio, when you come to Italy? I d say, When do you want me? When a French company bought us, I was grateful for three years of French in high school and 2 ½ years of advanced French at USMA. I had a lot of frequent flyer miles. He stayed in the reserves following active duty, progressing up to division command. He retired in 1999 as a major general. George lives with Stephanie, his wife of 50 years, in Whispering Pines, North Carolina. They have a son, a daughter and four grandchildren The 11-year-old, George quipped, recently asked me if he had been in the Civil War. Page 8
Alumni Connection Al Anderson, his wife Suzanne, and their twins Sumner and Lindsey Al Anderson ( 90) is an information technology strategist for Solar Turbines Incorporated in San Diego. He s been with the company for nearly 15 years. Before that he worked for Parametric Technology Corporation, where he met up with former teammates Dan Ewen ( 90), Ted Permuth ( 91), and Mark Matheson ( 91). Al was commissioned an infantry officer and had high enough class rank to select Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, for his first assignment. Teammate Mike Trisler ( 90) convinced him that it would be cool to try surfing. (Many of you have probably seen Mike over the last few years and not realized it. After winning the Best Ranger competition in 1995, he left the Army and became a Hollywood stuntman. He has appeared in dozens of movies including Point Break, The Guardian, and American Sniper.) Hawaii turned out to be a good choice for Al for another reason. It was the best thing I ever did since I ended up marrying my beautiful neighbor, Suzanne, he says. She had gone to Hawaii to surf and lived next door on the North Shore of Oahu. We are still married after 22 years. In 1994, Al was reassigned to the Infantry Training Brigade at Fort Benning, Georgia. Three years later, after two company commands, he was medically separated due to late onset juvenile diabetes. He and Suzanne moved to San Diego ( So my wife could surf, Al says) where Al pursued an MBA before starting a corporate career. Suzanne manages the undergraduate teaching laboratories at UC San Diego. She and Al have twins, Sumner and Lindsey, who are high school seniors. Al tore his ACL in a pickup football game during the fall of his junior year and was out for the rest of the season. Still, he was elected captain his senior year. He came back with career best times in the 50, 100, and 200 freestyle and helped set Academy records in the 200 and 400 free relays. His three first places against Navy played a major part in Army s second straight victory over the midshipmen. Page 9