When Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were at the peak of their basketball rivalry, each would check the newspaper in the morning to see how the other performed the previous night. If Magic scored 40 points or got a triple-double, Bird felt compelled to one-up him the next time he took the court.
Mac Ratzlaff and Cade Oliver have a similar game of “anything you can do, I can do better” in the swimming pool, but with one added wrinkle — they don’t have to check the newspaper or go on MeetMobile to look up one another’s times.
The two Franklin seniors, who also happen to be cousins, get to measure themselves against one another every day.
Grizzly Cubs coach Zach DeWitt said that the rivalry is very real, but he guessed that Oliver and Ratzlaff would try to downplay it. As it turns out, they really didn’t.
“I’m a little salty I didn’t win county (swimmer of the year) last year, so I’m going to try to one-up him this year and get it all,” Ratzlaff said. “It’s fun; we’re both competitive and we both like winning. We’re not in the same events, so we have to see who wins the most.”
More often than not, they’re both winning a lot. The two have dominated their respective events, particularly over the past two seasons — Ratzlaff in the freestyle and butterfly, Oliver in the backstroke and individual medley — and both are on the short list of favorites to win individual state championships next week at the IU Natatorium.
Both came close as juniors. Oliver was third in both the 100-yard backstroke and the 200 IM; Ratzlaff was third in the 200 freestyle and fourth in the 100 free. Ratzlaff will compete in the 200 free and 100 butterfly this postseason.
The two have taken a leap forward this past year, with Oliver qualifying for the USA Swimming Olympic Trials in three different events; Ratzlaff, who hopes to earn his way into the trials this spring, dominated the prestigious OLY Invitational in December, winning four events and setting personal bests in three of them.
Opinions vary on what has enabled both swimmers to reach an even higher echelon, especially during a pandemic. Both Ratzlaff and Oliver believe that they gained an edge last spring, during the two-month period when pools and gyms were closed. They spent that time on their families’ property doing “Rocky IV”-style workouts in a barn or swimming laps in a makeshift 50-meter lane that their mothers helped construct in a pond.
The water wasn’t particularly welcoming, especially in March and April.
“We had to get a wetsuit,” Ratzlaff recalled. “Me and Cade tried to go out in a Speedo the first time; we got about 25 yards and said, ‘No.’ We hauled some serious butt back — it was too cold.”
“It actually made us want to get back in the actual pool more,” Oliver added. “It sucked; it really did. It was very cold most of the time, but we wanted to do something to get in the pool. However we could do it, we tried to do it. It definitely made us miss it more.”
DeWitt believes that any physical edge gained from those workouts during the shutdown has likely been negated over time, but the mental advantage might still be lingering.
“It was maybe a competitive edge,” the coach said, “and something that they had in their mind in terms of, ‘I’ve been doing work that you haven’t been, and I’ve been willing to go distances you haven’t been.'”
The two Grizzly Cub stars have very different personality types; Oliver, DeWitt says, is more calculating and detail-oriented, while Ratzlaff takes more of a brute-force approach. Mac displays more of a visible swagger, Cade a quiet confidence.
According to the coach, the two cousins have just two things in common — both are, for better and for worse, pretty emotional people, and both absolutely loathe even the idea of failure or losing.
That second common thread has pushed both to reach heights rarely seen in high school swimming.
“If you believe that iron sharpens iron, so does one man to another … it’s similar on a pool deck,” DeWitt said. “It’s because of all the competitions had in practice that they’ll be able to do such stuff, not necessarily in the moment. Because they’ve had to compete with one another on a daily basis for the last year, that’s why they’re put in a position to be able to accomplish that.”
“Definitely a love-hate,” Oliver concurred. “Mac and I always go back and forth. We know that we love each other, we know that we’ll be there for each other, but we have to give each other competition because we know that makes us better, and it’s shown. We always try to go at each other in practice, and it makes us better in meets.”
At both this weekend’s sectional meet and next week’s state finals, Ratzlaff and Oliver will put their daily back-and-forth aside and unite for the common purpose of hanging another banner at the Franklin pool; a top-two state finish would be the boys team’s third in the last four years.
Nothing would make Oliver or Ratzlaff happier than both claiming a pair of individual championships in the process of leading the Grizzly Cubs to some more team hardware.
Well, almost nothing.
“That would be a really solid way to end my high school career,” Ratzlaff said.
“But yeah — I just hope I win more than he does.”
