Ithaca High swimmers perform without home pool

Ithaca High School’s big project to improve the pool is nearly complete, with water set to flow next month. Unfortunately, it will not be ready on time for this year’s boys swimming and diving team to enjoy. For the second straight season, they have competed without a home pool and are still finding success.

Last season, the Little Red used the facilities at Tompkins Cortland Community College. This season, however, they’re heading north to utilize Lansing’s pool. It’s not an easy set-up, but Ithaca is coming off its first win of the season, taking down Binghamton on Dec. 21. First-year head coach Jonathan Singer, who was an assistant coach last season, gave his takeaways from the win that evened up Ithaca’s record at 1-1.

“The boys are all performing really well,” Singer said. “There have been a lot of them working very hard in the offseason. We have a lot of seniors and a lot of upperclassmen this year, so we’re kind of a top-heavy team. They have definite goals for themselves and objectives they want to achieve and they’ve been looking for ways to get that done. After Binghamton, we sat down and realized there’s really just a bunch of very small technical things that we’re going to work on.”

Singer is a coach who focuses on the smaller aspects of swimming in order to shave time off the clock and talked about that method that he hinted at earlier.

“I had a couple of different coaches when I was coming up that like to really focus on things like starts, turns and relay exchanges — not necessarily the actual swimming itself, but all of the other things that feed into it,” Singer said. “I always got tremendous benefit out of that. I’ve been coaching at Dryden as well for the varsity girls, and that’s what we focus on. We’ve seen a lot of benefit from that. We’re going to try and translate that over to the boys.”

The practices where they can work on those things are happening in Lansing around the Bobcats’ schedule. That has not impeded the progress of the Little Red, which is something Singer is very proud of.

“The absolute toughness that this exhibits is extraordinary,” Singer said. “It’s not our home pool, and having to work around another school’s schedule is sometimes a hassle, but I think all the boys have really adapted remarkably well. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a similar situation when I was swimming the varsity. It’s really pretty remarkable that they’ve just sort of rolled with the punches so easily.”

The impact of a new pool will be huge for the program. Beyond the fact that there will be much fewer bus rides for the athletes, it can help grow the team, Singer said.

“We really are rehabbing the whole facility,” Singer said. “I think it’s going to not only give our veteran swimmers sort of a confidence boost for next year, but I’m also really hopeful that we’ll be able to attract a lot of new faces to the team. Ithaca is a pretty big district, and there’s a lot of talent out there lurking; we just need to find a way to get them onto the pool deck. Usually, you hope for an Olympic year, where you can generate some interest, but I think the new facility might do that for us as well.”

Over the past decade, there were some incredible Ithaca boys swim teams that ruled Section IV and featured multiple state champions. The program has decreased in size since then, and Singer detailed how he hopes to get the program back to those heights.

“We’re sitting at a dozen athletes right now, which, for a school this size, we could do better,” he said. “I think a lot of it is going to come from generating interest in the program. If we can start posting, ‘these guys set a new pool record,’ ‘these guys are going on to states’ and stuff like that, they can see that it’s a serious program. If you want to be a serious varsity athlete, then you’ll know that this is an opportunity for you.”

Following winter break, the Little Red will be back in action on Jan. 4 against a strong Johnson City team. Perseverance has been the name of the game for the boys swim team the past two seasons, but soon enough, their efforts will be rewarded with a state-of-the-art facility next year.

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