Seniors lead MDI to third straight title

BRUNSWICK – How do you boil down an effort that produces a whopping 437 meet points, places 19 individuals and relay teams in the championship finals, comes away with three individual and two relay titles, AND wins a third straight state championship?

Well, if you’re the Mount Desert Island Trojans, it comes down to three main factors: Quality, quantity, and character.

Head coach Tony DeMuro’s veteran-laden Trojans won their third straight Class B state swimming championship in emphatic fashion Monday. MDI swamped the competition with talented swimmers and a lot of them en route to a 172-point win over runnerup Old Town, which used to implement the same formula to win 14 straight B state crowns from 1985 to 1998.

“When I was swimming, I think the most we had was eight guys and I’ve been a coach with just seven guys, and they were some of the best swimmers in the state, but it wasn’t enough, numbers-wise,” said DeMuro. “Now we have 26 boys and that’s the most we’ve had in a long time and maybe ever.”

The Trojans were led by a solid corps of nine seniors. Kevin Staples started things off by winning the meet’s second event – the 200-yard freestyle – with a time of 1 minute, 47.43 seconds.

The other individual titles came from senior Sargeant Pepper, who won the 50 free in 22.11 seconds, and junior Frank Carbone in the 500 free (4:55.22).

The Trojans also won the 200 free relay with a team of Pepper, Staples, senior Josh Radford and junior Reid Swanson, who swam a meet-record time of 1:30.05 to break the old mark of 1:31.74 set in 1997 – by MDI.

The final win of the long day came in the final event as MDI’s team of Carbone, Staples, sophomore Justin Gilmartin, and Pepper took the 400-free relay in another meet-record time of 3:19.99, beating a 1997 mark of 3:20.77 set by Old Town.

It’s all the end result of at least 10 years of volunteering, coaching, and organizing youth swim programs at the local YMCA and YWCA, not to mention all the work put in by DeMuro and his father Len at the high school level.

“You have to give a lot of credit to the Y program we have and all the volunteers and coaches and swimmers,” said Tony DeMuro. “We tied for second six or seven years ago and that was a bit of a spark, but the real key is getting numbers out and keep them out.”

David Martinez, an exchange student from Asuncion, Paraguay, who is a junior at Old Town, was named the outstanding swimmer of the meet after swimming the third leg of Old Town’s winning 200 medley relay team, finishing second in the 200 free, winning the 100 butterfly, and swimming the anchor leg of Old Town’s second-place 400 free relay team.

Senior John Cronin of Belfast won the 1-meter diving competition in comfortable fashion with 309.40 points to 285 by runnerup Chad Grass of MDI, but with a small team, catching the Trojans’ juggernaut was a tall order for the Lions – as it was the rest of the Class B field.

“My last two dives weren’t as well executed as I wanted them to be, but I dove pretty well in the preliminaries, so that really set me up pretty well,” said Cronin, who said the relative looseness of the Bowdoin diving board took some getting used to. “We only have six other guys competing, so it’s kind of tough to beat MDI. Plus, they have nine seniors so that’s a lot of experience.”

The Trojans stormed out to a 175-95 lead over Belfast after five events and then really opened up some breathing room with 222 points after six. Their nearest competitor was Ellsworth with 101.5.

Four meet records were set Monday and two were accomplished by Old Town – and Martinez. First, Martinez swam the 100-yard butterfly in 52.75 seconds during the preliminaries earlier in the day and then the 200 medley relay team of Jacob Shanley, Gerald Herlihy, Martinez and Jeff Dow won the event with a time of 1 minute, 41.43 seconds.