Fitch swimming co-op claims rivalry meet with East Lyme/NFA, 89-80

East Lyme — There are days when high school swimming is anything but glamorous, the hour bus ride to Amity of Woodbridge for a meet or a two-hour practice with your face in the water. Because there are only three boys' cooperative teams in the Eastern Connecticut Conference, the programs travel to compete against teams from the Southern Connecticut Conference. The ECC Invitational on Feb. 28 will feature individual competition but no team scores. Then there are days like Tuesday, an 89-80 victory for the Fitch cooperative team — featuring swimmers from Fitch, Stonington, Wheeler and St. Bernard — over East Lyme/Norwich Free Academy. Rivalry days. "You forget how much emotion's involved in it, you know?" said first-year East Lyme coach Al Opsahl, who previously coached at Ledyard and has spent the last few years officiating the sport. "I mean, it drains you. You're in it with the kids. You watch them swim and you're right in there with 'em. ... We were pumped up for this." "It's always been fun," Fitch sophomore Gabe Pacheco said of the matchup with East Lyme, with each team competing against an opponent from the ECC for the first time this season. "It's always a good competition. We're always racing against guys we know, guys we swam with before. It got the adrenaline rushing. For ECCs: what we're going to do, how we're going to do it. Like a welcome to the ECCs kind of moment." Fitch (2-2) led 55-54 after the 500-yard freestyle and 63-60 after the 200 freestyle relay. The Falcons won both events, with East Lyme taking second and third. Fitch then swept the 100 backstroke behind defending ECC champion Evan Hespeler, who was first in 1 minute, 1.86 seconds. Valentino Tippets was second for the Falcons and Bobby Chasteen third. That gave the Falcons a more comfortable 76-63 advantage. Pacheco earned wins in the 200 individual medley (2:09.84) and the 100 breaststroke (1:07.19), also contributing to victories in the 200 medley relay and the 200 freestyle relay. In addition to the backstroke, Hespeler won the 100 butterfly and William O'Donnell was first in the 200 and 500 freestyle events. Pacheco joined Evan Hespeler, Joel Hespeler and Blake Laney in winning the medley relay and he teamed with Tippets, O'Donnell and Sterling Welsh to finish first in the 200 free relay. East Lyme's Ed Morcos won the 50 freestyle (23.96) and the 100 freestyle (52.82), both exhilarating sprints against Welsh of Fitch. Morcos also led the Vikings' 400 freestyle relay to victory, joined by Connor Foerster, Albert Zhu and Ben Morales. East Lyme is 1-3. "He's incredible. I'm glad to have him as my opponent, as my rival even," Morcos said after racing Welsh twice in a short amount of time. "I see him as a challenge and it pushes me to go far beyond what I think I'm capable of. I always stick to the same idea. Always expect the unexpected. Always expect that your opponent is training harder, so you should train harder and I did that. But I know I have to keep going if I want to beat him at ECCs." Morcos, a senior, has gotten used to the bus rides, he said, and the anonymity of swimming doesn't bother him. "I'm not about the medals," Morcos said. "I'm about me, how can I improve. Medals are just a little gift, they make it just a little bit sweeter. But in the end, I want to improve. I want to be better." "You're not in it for the glory here," Opsahl said. "I tell you what, we have two-hour practices and they're working hard in two hours. I don't know of any other sports where you're working that hard and you got your face in the water, you're not talking to anybody else. It's cold and wet." Opsahl and Fitch coach Katey Kokomoor both said they hope to see the swimming ranks being rebuilt. "I think eventually. It's going to take a while," Kokomoor said. "I think COVID really hurt, but the club teams have a lot of young kids. It's going to be a few years. ... It's always fun to have a road trip, but it's also tiring." For Tuesday, at least, the Falcons and Vikings got to face off against their traditional rivals. "I went into it biting my fingernails just like every year," Kokomoor said. "The backstroke was the turning point of the meet. We went 1-2-3 in the backstroke and that was our turning point. It was a very exciting meet the whole way through." v.fulkerson@theday.com