At Southrock on Saturday morning the Oak Park men had its first meet in which they had an underwhelming performance but are optimistic heading forward.
 
Senior '22 Tony Vanderbeek went on to tell me he didn't meet his own expectations in the pool. He came in 10^th in the 50-yard Freestyle and 9^th in the 100-yard Freestyle swimming a 23.75 and a swam a 53.32 which is off from his state times from last year. Vanderbeek said he wants to swim a 21.16 for the 50 by state in his senior year. '20 Robbie Hill's record is what Vanderbeek is going for by the end of this year. He believes that is a time that could place highly at state. He placed 16^th last year in class 2 and with the move down to class 1 this year he would have placed 8^th in Class 1 and 3^rd amongst Juniors.

The anticipation is real, but Vanderbeek says it will have to wait a little longer.

"Training right now is in full swing and most of the meets we will compete on either sore or tired… we are looking at the bigger picture here and I won't perform at my best until COMO and State."

It will be exciting to see how far he and the rest of the team comes this year.
 
The Northmen's next big meet is the North Kansas City School District Invite on September 17^th at 4:00pm and September 18^th at 12:30. The Northmen look forward to that to set the pace for the rest of the big meets this season. season.