Bragging rights at stake in city swim meet

LYNN – First things first. The traditional dive through the hoop that acts as the starting point for the Lynn City Swim Meet – which commences Saturday at the newly-christened Peter A. Sawin Natatorium at Tech – is the subject of some discussion.”I want to do it,” says Classical captain Mac St. Ives.”I’m the only senior captain, so it’s probably going to be me,” says English’s McKenzie Shultz, “but if someone else wants to do it, that’s OK.”Shultz’s apprehension is understandable. She saw a teammate once bounce off the plastic covering (festooned in English colors and with the English logo) and end up hitting her head off of it.Then there’s the dye.Each school takes a couple of bottles of water dyed with its colors and dumps it into the pool.”Last year,” St. Ives recalls, “I had to go around the corner (to Shaw’s) and get the dye.”These moments, say the swimmers, are what make the city meet (consisting of English, Classical and Tech) so special. In fact, if you ask either of them, they’d tell you that they’d take a title in the meet over almost anything else (though this year, Classical could end up being champs of both the city and the Northeastern Conference boys, after winning Wednesday’s league championship).”Definitely, the city meet,” says St. Ives.”Same here,” Shultz says. “We all know each other. We’re all friends. Sometimes, we swim with another team when we can’t make our own practices. It’s just a fun thing, and we want to beat our friends. It’s for bragging rights, the same as any other sport.”In a way yes ? but in a way no, too. The community is much tighter. All three coaches (Denise Silva of Classical, Brad Tilley of Tech; Lisa Trahant of English) treat all the swimmers in the city as if he/she is one of their own, they both say.”I wouldn’t have any problem going up to any of them, or any of the assistants, to talk to them about something,” St. Ives said.That the public school swimmers are so tight is due in no uncertain terms to the late Peter Sawin, who established the meet 42 years ago and is considered – by anyone connected with the sport in the city – to be the Father of Lynn Swimming. Last fall, the pool at Tech – and the bleacher area surrounding it – was renamed in his honor.”I think that’s how old it is,” said Tilley. “I’ve been doing this for 36 years, and it was going on for six years prior to when I started. So 42 it is.”After being on the outside looking in for many of those years, Tech is on a roll. The Tigers, coached by Brad Tilley, have won the last four meets. And they could have an ace in the hole in their quest for No. 5: Dayan Gonzalez, a sophomore diver whose first exposure to the sport was last year.”I ran cross country in the fall of my freshman year,” he said, “and my head coach (Tech assistant swim coach John Hogan) noticed I had strong legs and he asked me to try swimming.”Then,” Gonzalez said, “he taught me the basics of diving and I found I liked it. After that, coach (Don) McKenney taught me more. All my coaches have been really good.”So good, in fact, that Gonzalez won the diving portion of the Commonwealth Conference meet Wednesday night and, in the process, outpointed the previous Lynn record-holder (Tom Shuman).St. Ives said this year’s meet should be close.”I think it will,” he said. “English got us in the beginning of the year, but after last night (the NEC championship), we made a strong statement. There’s some momentum there.”But Silva cautioned against any overconfidence following the Rams’ win Wednesday.”It should give us plenty of motivation going into it,” she said, “but nothing’s a given. That’s the beauty of this meet.”These days, both English and Classical are part of co-ops. The Bulldogs pair with Winthrop while the Rams swim with Saugus. Both schools have added much to their programs, as each provides one captain (Brian Nelson from Saugus; and Mike Bruno from Winthrop). Nelson, in fact, got two seconds in the NEC meet to help put Classical over the top.”This is the