BY KYLE BRENNAN
CITIZEN’S NEWS
BEACON FALLS — What a difference a year makes.
Last year, the pandemic-shortened winter sports season left teams scrambling to jam in as many competitions with as few practices as possible. A year later, Woodland boys swim coach Brendan Heller is happy for the training benefits of an entire season.
“By this time last year, we were only on our first meet,” said Heller, whose Hawks are off to a 4-1 start in the dual-meet season.
With a normal start this season, Heller said that the team had the proper amount of time to get into swim shape before jumping into its most competitive meets.
“The first six weeks, guys were just trying to get back in the swing of things,” Heller said. “We have a lot of multi-sport athletes, so they’re not year-round swimmers. The first six weeks were about getting our fitness back and getting our swimming muscles back in shape. Now that we’ve gotten through that, we’re developing speed and strength. We’ve done some dry-land training, which is something we didn’t do last year. Now that we’re more into the meets, it’s good to see where we’re at.”
There are other changes between this year’s squad and last year’s team that finished as the Naugatuck Valley League runner-up. Woodland lost a few of its more competitive swimmers and is forging through this winter with 22 athletes, including 10 seniors.
But Heller said depth and talent are two different things.
“Our roster isn’t as deep as it was last year, so we’ve been trying to work through that,” Heller said. “We’re talented and we have a big senior class.”
Among seniors, Aiden Kennedy leads the team’s freestyle contingent while Tyler MacDowall and Tyler Cyr are “versatile,” Heller said. Diver D.J. Mulligan, the reigning NVL champion who recently signed to compete at the University of Maine, continues to perform well.
“He’s got a lot of room for growth and potential once he starts diving six months a year in college,” Heller said of Mulligan.
There are plenty of talented underclassmen for the Hawks, too. Heller highlighted sophomore Chase Starzman and freshmen Alex Weisenbacher and Nolan Bernier in particular.
“They’re young guys, but they come to work,” Heller said. “They’re going to keep getting better and stronger. They’re the future of the team, and it’s good that they’re so into it.”
While Woodland’s depth might make contending for a league championship more challenging, the Hawks still consider themselves among the NVL’s top programs with Oxford and Holy Cross, the seven-time defending league champion. Woodland fell just 10 points shy of the Crusaders in last year’s championships.
The Hawks will host Holy Cross on Feb. 8 before ending the season Feb. 18 at Oxford. Those competitions not only could be previews of the league finals, but also the Class S meet.
“We might be three of the top six teams at Class S, so I’m trying to weigh in how we want to approach that with training,” Heller said. “I use the regular season to figure out our best lineup for the championship meets.”
