Lenape swims well at PASDA
By: Zoe Crain – Special Writer
With only 15 members of the Lenape Swim Club competing in the PASDA Championship Meet, the odds of success were stacked against them from the beginning.
However, the team overcame the challenge of boasting a short roster, and placed fifth overall in the Division 3 group. These results, combined with their record from the summer season, allow the team to move up to Division 2 next year.
Before the meet had started, Lenape coach Krista Magid knew that their low numbers would make a very competitive meet even more difficult.
"Our team is a pretty good size, but we never have a lot of kids swim championships," she said. "So, most teams there have at least a third of their team compete, but we don’t."
Magid’s co-coach, Ashley Pantall, said that with a low roster teams typically have a hard time holding their own in the meets.
"It’s tough to compete with only a few swimmers," Pantall said. "Some of the teams have three or four kids swimming one race, which gives them more of a team experience. But our numbers were so small, that it was more of an individual competition."
Magid also cited lack of experience as a reason for the team’s difficulty in big summer championship meets, such as the PASDA outing.
"For most of the kids that swam champs this year, it was their first year," Magid said. "But, some of the older kids had swam at champs before, so that helped us out this year."
Older team standouts Kevin Doo, Zack Warner and Brianna McKenna used their experience to help carry the team along in the meet. Kevin Doo, an 11-year-old who swims in the 12-and-under division, had one first place award and two second place finishes. Warner, 13, who competes with the 14-and-unders, had a hat trick of first place awards, and the 12-year-old McKenna also nabbed three first place ribbons.
"Those three kids placed new records and won their events for all of the divisions in PASDA," Magid said. "The reason that’s such a big deal is because we’re in the third division, which is the lowest division. But those kids set records and beat out kids even in the highest division – the first division."
For the younger swimmers, there was considerable success as well. The Maslanka sisters, Sarah and Carolyn, scored very well within their age groups. Ten-year-old Carolyn nabbed two first place finishes, a second place and a third place. Six-year-old Sarah had similar success, with two first place finishes and a fourth place award.
Overall, Magid said she was very satisfied with the fifth place finish her team had earned.
"The way they calculate rank is by total number of merit points," she said. "So, I think it’s significant that we got fifth place, because we have so few swimmers. So for us to place, it means that the swimmers that we have are earning a lot of points. That keeps us in the running with teams that have 30 or 40 kids doing champs."
Pantall hopes that the attendance at this meet will increase in the next few years, as the large group of younger swimmers get older and get more involved with the club.
"Right now, we only have one or two 17-and-under girls," Pantall said. "Our team is very young, so as our swimmers get older, our team is bound to just grow. Not only will the team get bigger, but I think we’ll get better because the younger girls will have more big meet experience once they reach the higher age groups."
Magid agreed with her co-coach and commented that PASDA is a great way for the coaching staff to see the development of each individual swimmer.
"It’s cool because we get to see the way they progress," she said. "Champs is a really good way to see how they’ve progressed on a larger scale, just because we can see them swimming against much stronger swimmers."
The PASDA meet is split up over the course of two days in late July, with the older swimmers swimming first, and then the younger swimmers following. Because of this schedule, the different age groups don’t have much interaction with each other, but just the act of watching can be beneficial for the younger swimmers.
"During the meets, when the younger kids can watch them, it’s really a place where the little kids get a lot of inspiration," Magid said. "For a lot of (the younger swimmers), it’s their first year on the team, or it’s their second year, but the first time that they could really swim all the way across. So for them to watch the big kids do so well at champs, it really gives them something to aspire to."
Magid, who didn’t swim competitively on high school or college teams, said that the Lenape Swim Club has always had a special place in her heart. She swam for the club up until she was no longer eligible, at which point she immediately began coaching. In the four years she has been coaching, she said that the team has "come a long way."
Pantall brings a different background to the coaching staff. Like Magid, she began swimming for club teams at a young age, but Pantall continued her career in high school and in college at Seton Hall University. Pantall said that coaching large teams is difficult, but doable.
"The main thing is to develop a relationship with each individual swimmer," she said. "There are so many swimmers, but you really have to know little things about each one, like what they like to do, how they perform, how they like to be coached. If you have a positive relationship with the swimmers, they perform well as a team."
In Division 3 for the regular season, Lenape placed second with a record of 4-1-1. Moving up to Division 2 is a sign of accomplishment, but Magid says it fits into a pattern of moving to the second division, then getting bumped back down to third division, because the team is unable to keep up with the second division swimmers.
She attributes this pattern to the differences in coaching a second division team and a third division team.
"We encourage the kids to be competitive, but we are more about making sure that they’re really valuing sportsmanship and that they’re having fun," Magid said. "We never push them; we’re never hard on them to swim faster. We’re very encouraging and optimistic about the way things are going to go, but it’s a much healthier level of competition."
Pantall acknowledged the pattern, but said she’s confident that the team will be able to succeed.
"It’s definitely going to be more competitive, no question about that," Pantall said. "But I really think our swimmers have been getting much stronger and I think they’ll be able to do just fine against the stronger teams."
So, as Lenape looks towards next season and the challenge of competing in Division 2, they know that in order to succeed in the more difficult arena, the team has to break their dreaded pattern. But despite all these challenges, the team is far from dead in the water.

