St. Joseph (Met.) boys swimming avoids upset, wins 40th straight GMC title

The tales of St. Joseph (Met.)'s demise were greatly exaggerated.

The Falcons entered with a winning streak at the Greater Middlesex Conference Championship that spanned close to four decades, but following a tie to an always tough East Brunswick squad during the dual meet season, the conference thought it might finally have a challenger to dethrone the perennial champs.

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RELATED: GMC Boys Swim Championship notes and results

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Instead, all the chatter did little more than to wake what was, at worst, a sleeping giant, and St. Joseph (Met.) emerged with its 40th straight win at the conference championship with 614.50 points to second-place East Brunswick's 563.

"It pumps me up," senior Sean Carlucci said, in reference to all the speculation in the papers and from fellow swimmers. "It actually does more damage to (East Brunswick) than it does to us. We get so hyped up for this. The whole school gets hyped up. I've never seen so many faculty members here in my life."

The Raritan Bay YMCA was electric, and near deafening when St. Joseph (Met.) was announced as one of the top-six finishers in an event. The Falcons had 14 top-six finishes in total, highlighted by a 1-3 finish in the 200 free relay, with the relay team of Carlucci, Michael D'Esposito, Michael Botting and Trent Tighelaar, and by Botting's two individual titles.

Botting won both the 200 IM and 100 back.

"That was a lot of motivation," Botting said. "I was reading those articles today during school, and I just re-read them and re-read them. It really psyched me up.

"In the IM, I noticed right off the bat that I had a huge lead. I knew Keren (Huang) was going to catch up to me in the breaststroke because I swim with him every day. I just knew I had to hammer it down in the 100 freestyle."

Even with East Brunswick taking the opening 200 medley relay, St. Joseph (Met.) placed third and sixth, and quickly took control with Botting's performance in the 200 IM.

"We were fired up," Tighelaar said. "We've never had more than, maybe three faculty members. Today we had students from all over the place and a row of teachers. It was great. We were hearing things, not just from the articles, but from all over the place. We proved everybody wrong."

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