Whitefish Bay moves up in the North Shore

The always competitive North Shore Conference has often been a battle among D1 powers Mequon Homestead and Glendale Nicolet, and D2 powers Whitefish Bay and Cedarburg. It looks like Whitefish Bay has moved to the head of the class.

The Blue Dukes won the North Shore Relays last week with 92 points, five more than Homestead and 10 more than third-place Nicolet. Cedarburg finished fourth with 68 points.

Of course, some may partly attribute Whitefish Bay's success to the heavy loss dealt via graduation to some of the conference rivals. Perhaps no league in the Milwaukee area lost as many top-flight swimmers as the North Shore, with the likes of Nicolet's Steve Cebertowicz, Homestad's Jonathan Whitcomb, and Cedarburg's Tommy Radtke and Mike Schalla having graduated.

Whitefish Bay lost some key seniors as well -- Peter Brengel chief among them -- but the Blue Dukes returned a slew of swimmers, many of them with state-meet experience, and are emerging early this season as one of D2's top teams. One of the key's to Whitefish Bay's success is their versatility; they have a bunch of swimmers who can swim several different events, and swim them well, which gives coach Jim Davis a lot of room to maneuver in setting up lineups. To wit, the Blue Dukes won both the 400 medley relay (four swimmers x 100 in each stroke) and the 400 IM relay (four swimmers x 100 IM) at the North Shore meet. They also won the breaststroke and backstroke relays at the meet, plus the closing 400 free relay. Leading the way for the team were juniors Jason Castillo, Chris Fink, and Chuck Prestigiacomo, and sophomore D.J. Freisch, all of who swam on three winning relays.