Juniors Maciej Olszewski and Ryan Knohl each turned in a pair of top 5 individual finishes Saturday to spark Evanston’s swimmers to a strong third place team showing at the 49th annual Evanston Invitational meet.
Under the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association (NISCA) standard point table, the host Wildkits racked up 2,780 points and trailed only defending state champion New Trier (3,036) and Glenbrook South (2,904) in the 18-team field.
Olszewski claimed second place in the 100-yard breaststroke race with a time of 1 minute, 01.25 seconds after earlier placing fourth in the 200 individual medley in 2:00.80, a season best by almost three full seconds.
Knohl began his day with a third place clocking of 1:47.35 in the 200 freestyle, but he was just getting warmed up. He added a fifth in the 500 freestyle in 4:51.64, a season best by almost six seconds, and also contributed strong relay legs in the 200 and 400 freestyle relay races.
Knohl’s split of 22.86 was the second fastest for the ETHS 200 freestyle unit of Christian Stankovic, Jake Girard and Christopher Russo that earned fourth in 1:31.33. He combined with Joe Seguine-Hall, Stankovic and Russo for runnerup honors in the 400 relay in 3:14.51, another season best.
Also earning top 10 individual finishes for ETHS were Seguine-Hall, fourth in the 100 freestyle (48.96) and ninth in the 50 freestyle (22.75); and Russo, fifth in the 100 freestyle in 49.03 and eighth in the 50 freestyle in 22.69.