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Young Red Hawks Look To Make A Splash in 07-08
The predominant theme on this year's Ripon swim team is youth. The Red Hawks have seven freshmen and 10 sophomores on this year's squad, to go along with nine juniors and just four seniors. That would normally make for some growing pains in other sports, but swimming is a little different.
"Swimming is different than football or basketball in that freshmen have a real good chance of coming in and contributing right away because there isn't that physicality of body contact that you have to deal with in other sports," head swim coach Rick Coles said. "The nice thing about swimming is that the water isn't any thicker in college than it was in high school, so if they have a certain level of ability in high school, then they're able to perform at that level in college and improve from there."
The men's team consists of three freshmen, who will join six sophomores and five juniors on a squad that finished seventh at the Midwest Conference Championships a year ago. They will be led by juniors Parker Heaps (West Bend, Wis./West) and Ryan Hendricks (Waukesha, Wis./South), and sophomores Rich Heitkamp (Monroe, Wis./Monroe), Bruce Kukowski (Muskego, Wis./Muskego), and Severin Larsen (Bloomington, Ill./Normal Community), all of whom played a big role on last season's team.
"This is the largest team, numbers wise, since I've been at Ripon, so I look for the men's team to be much more competitive because we have a larger number of quality swimmers and because of the number of kids we have on the team, which will allow us to get some more down the line points that we haven't been able to get in the past," said Coles.
The women's team, much like the men's team has the most swimmers on the roster than they've had in recent memory. They will be led by senior Erin Oakley (Middleton, Wis./Middleton), juniors Shannon Colburn (Berlin, Wis./Berlin) and Amy Jones (Springfield, Ill./Sacred Heart-Griffin), and sophomore Jenni Schalla (West Bend, Wis./West). They helped Ripon finish seventh at last year's Midwest Conference championships, but with a year under their belt and four incoming freshmen, the Red Hawks are hoping to finish even higher this season.
"We have several returning swimmers that performed very well for us last year," Coles said. "Schalla, Oakley, Jones, and Colburn were all kids that were consistent point scorers for us last year, and some of the other returning swimmers will step up and get us some points as well."
The mix of veterans and first year swimmers on the women's team will do nothing but help the Ripon College swim program. The result of that will be higher scores, and a higher place among the teams in the Midwest Conference.
"The freshmen are all quality swimmers and the returnees were competitive last year, so we're hoping they can continue where they left off," Coles said. "We've got several quality kids that can place pretty high, and like the men's team, we have more depth this year, which will allow us to pick up some residual points down the line that we weren't able to get in past years."
The future of the Red Hawk swim program looks promising, with the highest number of swimmers on both the men's and women's team in Rick Coles' four-year tenure. Coach Coles will try to keep that going in the future, as he'll try to build on this year's recruiting class.
"We have a reasonable recruiting group joining the team this year, as well as some kids that swam in high school, but didn't come out for the team the past year or two, for different reasons," Coles said. "I think I attribute it to the fact that we had great kids in the program already and they speak well of what we're doing, which made more people want to be a part of it, and hopefully that will continue."
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