SEWELL — Twenty-six morning weight-lifting sessions. More than 80 practices. Hard work every day for months. It all added up to the first sectional championship for the Ocean City High School boys swim team since 1962.
On Thursday evening, the Red Raiders were crowned the 2022 South Jersey Public B champions and it made them feel that work paid off.
“Oh, my God, it feels amazing,” Gavin Neal said while his team celebrated their 90-80 win over Moorestown at the Gloucester County Institute of Technology. “It’s been way too long since we’ve won this and our coach has been nagging in our ears about 1962.” Laughing, he added, “I was sick of hearing it. So, me and all my boys put in the hard work since day one. We’ve been grinding. This is just pure hard work. There is nothing else that I can describe it as. We’ve been in the weight room, we’ve been grinding. Early practices, late practices. Nothing but hard work and grind.
“(Head coach Shane) McGrath, he knows what he’s doing,” Neal said. “He really knows what to do in practice and how to get us motivated. The energy is another thing that really gets us going. I feel that we have energy on any other team, which helps us win meets. It’s great.”
“They’re tired of hearing it,” McGrath happily agreed. “We write it at every practice. We write it on the weight room whiteboard. And this group together, they were tired of the 60-year drought so they took care of business today.”
“Oh, my gosh, it’s amazing,” junior Jackson Agnellini said. “I don’t even know how to express myself right now. Everybody is so happy. It’s amazing. Sixty years. Our coach has been waiting 10 years for this. It feels so good.”
What did it take to end six decades without a title?
Agnellini, like other teammates, summed it up the same way: “Twenty-six lifts in the morning before school. Over 80 practices. Just working hard every day, non-stop. I hope to go to states and next year come back and do it again.”
“We were close freshman year but we didn’t win,” Matt Woodside said. “It is great to come back this year and finally have the title.”
The difference, he said, is that “I think it’s that we wanted it. Last year because of COVID we couldn’t have this meet so this year we really wanted it. We got here and we put our all into it.”
Senior Nick Bianchi said it was four years in the making.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “I worked four years for this and every year it got harder and harder. I finally got it. I finally got it. It took us 26 lifts, 80 practices and a lot of mentality.”
Attesting to the work ethic, as the boys got their trophy, they briefly broke out singing “Day-O,” the Calypso number also known as “The Banana Boat Song” made famous by Harry Belafonte. It’s a traditional folk song about hard work.
“I started singing it in the locker room one day and it caught on,” senior Andrew Koch said. “It’s like a team tradition. Before meets we would sing it. It’s good luck for us.”
Winning the championship, he added, is “pretty sick. I’ve been here (before) and I lost every time I came here. Not anymore. It’s surreal. I haven’t processed it yet but all the work we put in this season, every time we’ve been up working before school, after school, it pays off in the end. I wouldn’t have rather done it with any other group of guys.”
Junior Colin Abbott agreed the victory felt amazing.
“We put in months, years of work, to achieve this,” Abbott said. “It’s been a great honor. It’s awesome. I couldn’t wish for anything better.”
“It’s one of the best feelings in the world,” senior Pat Armstrong said. “This team has worked so hard. We’ve had over 25 morning lifts, over 80 swim practices this season and I don’t know a group of guys that wanted this title more in the last 60 years than these guys I am with right now.”
