By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – New Ocean City High School graduate Dolan Grisbaum won Saturday’s one-mile open-ocean Master’s Swim – the middle event in three days of competitions for him – and fellow OCHS grad Andrea Teofanova finished as the fastest woman in the race.
Grisbaum, 17, of Ocean City, is a 2021 graduate of OCHS. He won the race in a time of 19 minutes and 51 seconds – a minute and a half faster than anyone else in the race.
Teofanova, 20, now swimming for Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., was the fastest woman with her time of 24:26, the ninth fastest swimmers overall.
The 2021 T. John Carey Master’s Swim drew just more than 100 swimmers after being off for a year in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grisbaum said he did the Master’s Swim for fun the night after winning the swim race at the Cape May County Lifeguard Championships and the day before competing in a town race in Avalon and following that with a two-mile swim workout.
Grisbaum is a rookie lifeguard on the Avalon Beach Patrol.
He said he prefers box swims like the Master’s, in which swimmers race out into the ocean to a marker, turn and race to the next marker, and then head back to shore, like the three sides of a box (even if one side of the box is a mile long). He contrasts that with competitions like those in lifeguard races during which swimmers race out to a flag in the ocean and then back to shore.
The box swims are mostly won by sheer racing ability, he said, whereas flag swims require more strategy and siting – orienting yourself in the water by locating reference points. “I’m not that good at siting,” he said. “That’s why I like the box swims because you’re not that far out where I’ll mess up the course as bad.”
For Grisbaum, doing multiple events is nothing out of the ordinary. For his club team, the South Jersey Aquatic Club, he can do as many as 10 events in a weekend, plus finals “so that is like 16 swims in one weekend.” He did note this past weekend “was a long three days for me.”
Grisbaum said over the course of those three days, he felt the best during the Master’s Swim.
Grisbaum holds three records with the OCHS Red Raiders, the 400-meter freestyle, the 500-meter freestyle and the 100 backstroke. He is heading to Boston University, where he’ll swim and major in business entrepreneurship and innovation and minor in computer science.
Grisbaum said he chose to become a lifeguard for Avalon because his swim coach at OCHS, Shane McGrath, and the girls swim coach at OCHS, Ian Keyser, are both lieutenants on the ABP. “They were very welcoming to me and it seemed like they really wanted me to come,” he said. Grisbaum plans to swim more events for the Avalon Beach Patrol before he heads off to Boston University.
Teofanova, who captained the OCHS Red Raider girls swim team in her senior year, said swimmers had to acclimate quickly when they got into the ocean.
“It was nice. The water was a little chilly. I think it was 66 degrees so your body had to adjust to the cold water, but it was really smooth once you got out. It was a fun race,” Teofanova said.
She finished three seconds ahead of the second-place woman, Kayleigh Olszewski, 19, of Sea Isle City.
“I swim distance in college so doing a mile race in the ocean kind of feels like home,” she added. Teofanova is a lifeguard on the Ocean City Beach Patrol, which oversees the Master’s Swim.
Asked what she likes about being a lifeguard, Teofanova said, “The ocean. The beach. Being outside. Working in the water all day, paddling and swimming, whatever you want. You can’t get a job better than this.”
Among the men, Rhett Cosgrove, 17, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., was second in 21:19; Frank Brady, 25, of Ocean City, third in 22:33; Ron Marks, 62, of Marmora, fourth, 23:01; Bobby Pugh, 58, of Wyndmoor, Pa., fifth, 23:05; Corbin King, 17, of Sea Isle City, sixth, 23:44: Rob Montgomery, 53, of Philadelphia, seventh, 24:01; Roger Baldino, 50, of Garnet Valley, Pa., eighth, 24:15; Doug Bergen, 58, of Ocean City, ninth, 24:44; and Jeff Reilly, 60, of Egg Harbor Township, 10th, 24:52.
Among the women, Kayleigh Olszewski, 19, of Sea Isle City, was second in 24:29, three seconds behind Teofavnoa; Liz Casey, 56, of Beesleys Point, third, 24:38; Melanie James-Cosgrove, 52, of Bryn Mawr, fourth, 24:52; Susan Reich, 62, of Ocean City, fifth, 25:52; Jillian Murphy, 16, of Sea Isle City, sixth, 26:12; Tess Andres, 40, of Richmond, Va., seventh, 26:42; Kelly Grimaldi, 39, of Warrington, Pa., eighth, 26:46; Christine Wike, 44, of Audubon, Pa., ninth, 28:08; and Kari Andreasen, 45, of Media, Pa., 45, 10th, 28:36.
The oldest finisher was Bob Pugh, 84, of Ocean City and the youngest was Mason Breidenstine, 11, of Linwood. Breidenstine finished in 44:19 and Pugh finished in 44:43.
When asked about the race, Pugh, who has been taking part in the Master’s Swim for years and years, smiled as he walked out of the ocean and said, “It gets harder every year.”
