Nob Valley team proves size doesn't matter
BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer

Ascia Johnson (above) and Tessa Trach (below) were just two of the many talented swimmers who helped lead the Nob Valley Swim Club team to a second-place finish at this year's B League Championship meet.

We've all heard about the little engine that could. Now meet the little swim team that could.

The Nob Valley Swim Club, however, is small only in terms of its roster size. Everything else about the North Brunswick-based team is big, especially its heart.

How else could one of the smallest teams in the New Jersey Swimming and Diving Conference finish second in the B League championship meet held recently at the Cedar Hill Club in Somerset.

Indeed, the NVSC carried only 54 swimmers ages 5-18 on its roster, yet managed to out-point eight of the other nine teams in the 10-team field. Only the Middlesex Water Rats scored more points than Nob Valley, and not by that much.

"I would say of all the teams we swam against this year, we were probably the smallest one," head coach Brian Rose, a former Nob Valley swimmer himself, said. "The Middlesex Water Rats, who finished in first place in the regular season and at the championship meet, swims at a municipal pool, so they have a lot more people to draw from. Their team is twice the size of ours.

PHOTOS BY BRIAN BENDER

"Other teams like Cedar Hill and Glen Ridge are also private clubs like us, but they have a lot more members," Rose added. "We're definitely drawing from a smaller pool of swimmers, no pun intended. That's why we're really proud of how the team came in second despite fighting out of our weight class in terms of the size of the teams."

So what was Nob Valley's secret to success?

"I would say part of it is because we have so few swimmers we really think every swim is important," Rose explained. "If you have 120 swimmers on your roster, like some teams do, then you might put your best 30 swimmers in the meet and the other 90 don't do much.

"But when you have less than 60 swimmers, almost every swimmer is being relied on to score at some point. We don't abandon anyone, even if they don't show talent right away. We make every one of our swimmers feel important."

The other part of the equation is the commitment by the swimmers on the team.

"A lot of our swimmers swim in the winter," Rose pointed out. "We as summer coaches, the best thing we can do is get the swimmers to have fun and motivate them to keep swimming in the winter. They have only six weeks to train in the summer, but if they swim in the winter then they pretty much go from September to April.

"Over the years we've been able to feed swimmers into the winter programs and then they're able to come back in the summer with more experience and help our program."

Rose, now 21, just graduated from Swarthmore (Pa.) College, where he was a member of the swim team. He's been a coach with the Nob Valley team in the summer since 2000, starting as an assistant and then becoming the head coach in 2002. Even as he coached, he continued swimming for the team until 2003.

His assistant coaches are Jordan Schannen, also 21 and another former NVSC swimmer, who will be a senior at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania this fall, and Julie Rose, Brian's 18-year-old sister, who just completed her final year of summer swimming with the team and is headed to Bucknell.

The trio of coaches guided Nob Valley to a winning record of 4-3-1 during the regular season and then the impressive second-place finish at the league championship meet.

"During the season we lost two meets to Middlesex, one to Cedar Hill, and we tied Glen Ridge," Brian Rose said. "But we came back and beat Cedar Hill and Glen Ridge at the championship meet. I think what really made a difference was our older girls age group."

The meet was held over two days with events for the 13-and-over swimmers (a 13-14 age group and a 15-18 division) taking place on Friday night, while U-13 events were held Saturday morning.

"We did not have any winners in individual events in the girls 13-14s or 15-18s," Rose said. "But in the two relay events, the two age groups combine and we took first and second in both the 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay."

In those events, teams match two girls from the 13-14 age group with two from the 15-18s.

"In most age groups, you have one swimmer who's your go-to swimmer in every event," Rose said. "But in our 13-14 age group this season, we had a different girl post the fastest time in each stroke."

Ascia Johnson, who had the fastest time in the 100 free, Nicole Gibbons in the 100 backstroke, Jackie Bender in the 100 breaststroke, and Ashley Chibbaro in the 100 butterfly swam the two relays. They were matched up with the 15-18 year-old quartet of Julie Rose, Nicole Van Avery, Nina Malanga and Katie Manning.

Between the eight of them, they scored 48 points: 14 points for each winning relay and 10 points for each runner-up finish.

"That was about 20 percent of our scoring right there," Brian Rose said. "We had the lead after the first night and toward the end of Saturday morning, but Middlesex caught us and passed us. They were third after Friday night, but they had too many young kids do well. Even when we had a couple of swimmers do well in an event, it seemed they [Middlesex] had two or three kids do well in the same event. They steadily racked up points."

Nob Valley had its share of point producers, too, led by Vinnie Gibbons, who won three events - the 50 free, 100 free and 50 back - in the boys 9-10 age group. In fact, Gibbons was undefeated in 23 races this season. Nob Valley had one winner on Friday night, when Joe Smoot captured the 13-14 boys 100 breaststroke.

The next morning, Sarah Stankiewicz added a win in the girls 11-12-year-old 100 IM, while her sister, Amanda Stankiewicz, won the 100 free in the girls 9-10.

The Stankiewicz sisters also joined Annie Bucca (11-12) and Samantha Wereszczak (9-10) to win the combined 9-12 age-group 200 free relay, the final event on Saturday.

"It was our last swim of the season," Rose noted. "So we ended on a good note with a surprise win since we were seeded third."

There is actually a third Rose involved with the team. Andy Rose, younger brother of Brian and Julie, was the team's top point scorer six of the last seven years, and was one of the top 15-year-old swimmers on this year's squad. Julie was the top scorer in 2004, so this year, with Gibbons leading the way, marked the first time since 1998 that Nob Valley's top scorer was not a Rose.

Kevin Chibbaro, another 15-year-old, and graduating senior Chris Turkiewicz, 18, joined Andy Rose as the team's top performers in the 15-18 boys, which was considered the premier age group in the league this summer. Between the three of them, they hold five of the six team records in that age group.

Other NVSC swimmers who shined this season were Matt Burke in the 13-14 boys, Nick Wereszczak in the 11-12 boys, 8-year-old Nicolette Aloia among the girls, and 5-year-old Jesse Gibbons among the boys.

"We were small," Brian Rose concluded, "but the kids we had really stepped up."