Despite Challenges, Brookfield Academy Swimmers Earn Medals at State Swim Meet

Four years ago, then-freshmen Jack Donovan and Jonathan Marks had ambition to start the swimming program at Brookfield Academy.

On Friday, their four years of hard work and recruiting other swimmers paid off as both took medals at the Divsion 2 WIAA State Swim Meet at the University of Wisconsin Natatorium in Madison.

“They (Donovan and Marks) swam out of their minds today,” Brookfield Academy coach Chris Stich said. “They really did well. I’m very, very proud of them.

"They worked really hard and they’ve got a lot of obstacles against them. Our school doesn’t have its own pool, so we need to train in the mornings in a different high school," Stich added.

Donovan kicked things off in the third event of the evening by taking fourth in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:44.08, a personal best.

He followed that up with another personal record that almost broke a state record. In the 100 butterfly, Donovan finished with in 49.80 seconds, a time that is just six-hundredths of a second off the state record set in 2010 by McFarland’s Ryan O’Donnell.

Unfortunately for Donovan, O’Donnell is still at McFarland and broke his own state record by hitting a 49.52.

“Swimming against Ryan is always great. They’re always great competitors and great sportsmen and it’s always a great opportunity to competing against them,” Donovan said. “Personally, I knew I had to swim my absolute best race possible in order to have a shot at winning, and everything was great except my first and third turns weren’t right where they needed to be.

“I gave it my all. Ryan’s an incredible competitor and great swimmer. He got this one also, like last year, but it was a good race," Donovan said.

The other half of Brookfield Academy’s two-man show put up impressive times as well.

Marks placed fourth in the 100 yard backstroke with a time of 53.39 and also finished fourth in the 200 individual medley, finishing at 1:58.10.

Both were personal bests that Marks said he was proud of.

“It was a pretty exciting meet,” Marks said. “I’m tapering down for a club state meet in two weeks, so I was pretty pleased with my performance tonight."

As a team, the Blue Knights finished 15th out of 28 teams on Friday with a score of 62. Considering they only had two swimmers at state and only nine on their whole team, that’s an impressive feat.

Speaking on the season as a whole, Stich said she was very proud of the things the team accomplished throughout the season.

“Our team is really unique in that we’ve got some very JV level, beginner swimmers and then we’ve got these guys that come to state,” Stich said. “It’s hard to wrap up the season in terms of record and everything, but in general our whole team had best times this year, we dropped a lot of time on our relays, set some school records on some relays. We’ve got a great program that we can build from here.”

As for Marks and Donovan, both have their eyes on colleges as Marks will be choosing between Stanford and Yale, while Donovan has narrowed down his options to either Notre Dame or Navy. Both said they’ll be swimming at whatever college they attend next year.