Hawks dive into different events  

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BEACON FALLS — Woodland boys swimming coach Tom Currier saw an opportunity to give his Hawks a unique midseason shakeup during Tuesday’s meet against Wilby, so he took advantage and threw his swimmers all over the pool.

Freestylers became backstrokers and breaststrokers became butterfliers. Currier entered most swimmers in events they don’t typically swim, and he liked what he saw.

“We did a lot of off-events,” Currier said after Woodland’s 90-78 win over the Wildcats. “We worked them pretty good (Monday at practice). Joe Flaherty and Zack Hummel did well. We didn’t really have original times for most of them, so everybody hit best times.”

The Hawks boasted plenty of individual winners. Greg Aldrich won the 200 freestyle (2:07.93) and 100 free (58.56 seconds), while Jeff Varesio took the 200 individual medley (2:29.29), Jake Stow claimed the 50 free (26.39 seconds) and Zack Arisian earned the 500 free (6:03.23).

Woodland also swam to victories in the 200 medley relay (Stow, Arisian, Ryan Curtin, Noah Scott, 2:01.88) and the 200 free relay (Aldrich, Stow, Flaherty, Chase Chura, 1:48.61).

The dual-meet win pushed the Hawks’ record on the season to 4-3. Woodland suffered consecutive setbacks last week with losses against Seymour and Sacred Heart.

After those defeats and a tough few days of practices, Currier wanted to provide a boost to his squad by flipping the lineup during Tuesday’s meet.

“Sometimes you can find events that they never thought they were good at,” Currier said. “It breaks up the monotony. If you’re doing the same event two times a week, you’re not seeing the dramatic changes and sometimes you get frustrated.”

Even if some swimmers won’t swim those same events again throughout the rest of the season, Currier said the shakeup will help develop the type of athlete he wants to develop.

“I want everybody to be racers, not just a butterflyer or whatever,” Currier said. “A couple of times, some of my records were broken by kids just trying an off-event. All of a sudden they’re good at it and they want to keep trying it.”

Woodland will host Torrington Friday before visiting Watertown on Tuesday.