Most boys swimming and diving teams would have been thrilled with a ninth-place finish at last year’s state meet. But after consecutive runner-up finishes in 2018 and 2019, Franklin considers itself in a different class than “most teams.”
The Grizzly Cubs are determined to right last season’s wrongs when the postseason arrives next month.
“Coming out of the COVID break, I’ve never seen commitment like I have been,” Franklin coach Zach DeWitt said. “We saw kids (at club practices) that we normally don’t see until season, people wanting to work hard. … Certainly we don’t feel like we belong in ninth place.”
With two of the state’s top swimmers in Cade Oliver and Mac Ratzlaff, both of whom should contend for state titles in their individual events, ninth feels like the floor for this year’s Grizzly Cubs. How high their ceiling is, though, will depend largely on the performance of the team’s other three seniors — Barrett Daily, Albert Nusawardhana and Ethan Pheifer.
All three experienced the big stage a year ago on relays, with Daily also qualifying in both the 200-yard individual medley and 100 breaststroke and Pheifer competing in the 100 backstroke. This year, the hope is to do more than just qualify.
“These five seniors, we’ve been together for the longest time in the whole world, and I think our main goal is just trying to hang one more banner before we leave it all,” Nusawardhana said. “We know that Cade and Mac, they’ll show up, but me, Ethan and Barrett, I think we all have a really good chance of getting points up individually and then contributing real well on that relay.”
Pheifer could be the best bet of the three to score individually at state, at least based on recent performance. He won the 100 freestyle by more than two and a half seconds at last weekend’s Mid-State Conference meet, with his time of 47.68 seconds one of the best in the state during the current regular season. DeWitt is hopeful that he can break through and give the Grizzly Cubs a surprise podium finish, much like Brock Lock did in the 100 free at the 2018 state meet.
A versatile athlete who has now played five varsity sports at Franklin after taking a stab at football in the fall, Pheifer wants to finish the season strong to give himself a chance to swim at the collegiate level. He and Daily are both looking to make their way onto the roster at Purdue, where Pheifer’s older sister Ella is currently a junior sprint freestyler.
“We’re really focused on going after practice and getting our turns and really just perfecting our strokes after practice,” Pheifer said. “All the seniors are staying after practice to work on our turns, work on our finishes, and we’re starting to see it a lot. We’re doing a lot better than we were last year. We’re a lot more motivated.”
Nusawardhana is just returning to form after a freak incident while walking on the pool deck early in the season left him with a dislocated kneecap that sidelined him for the bulk of the regular season. DeWitt said after the conference meet that Nusawardhana was at about 85 percent and should be back around 100 by the state meet. The biggest potential sticking point would be the breaststroke because the snap kick is a pretty unnatural motion for the knee, but he finished third in that event last Saturday.
Just six hundredths of a second in front of him was Daily, who has set very high expectations for himself for February — the goal, he says, is coming up with a top-eight individual finish in either the IM or the breaststroke. DeWitt isn’t putting anything past Daily, who he labeled as a “stoic leader” and one of the team’s top clutch performers.
“He’s the kind of guy that needs to be backed into a corner before he’s able to be great,” the coach said. “The light’s got to be a little brighter before Barrett knows it’s showtime, but if you look at his times over the last four seasons, he always shows up in the big moments.”
One such example came at last year’s sectional meet. With Franklin and Center Grove tied going into the final event, Daily battled through the migraines that had been hampering him all day and anchored the winning 400 freestyle relay to secure the Grizzly Cubs’ eighth straight sectional championship.
Daily hopes to be in position to come through in a similar fashion at the IU Natatorium, where Franklin should have a chance to finish back in the top two for the third time in his four years.
Finishing ninth again just won’t cut it for these guys. Nusawardhana, who sat out the 2019 runner-up season after transferring from Columbus North, wants to go out by being a bigger part of a banner run.
“Sophomore year … I was just thinking, ‘Gosh, I want to do this myself; I don’t just want to stand there, I want to contribute,’” he said. “We’ve been going our fast times in practice, faster than we’d gone last season, and with that trajectory, with a couple of weeks of rest and just sharpening up on minor skills, I think we’ll be good.”
“People built this foundation of success,” Daily added, “and we have the ability to achieve big things and that’s where our expectations come in. We know we can do better.”
