In a vote conducted by the conference’s coaches, St. Bonaventure, the A-10 runner-up in 2015 and the A-10 champions in 2013 and 2014, has been predicted to finish second this season and also received one first-place vote. The Bonnies have won three of the last 12 championship meets.
The Bonnies return 18 swimmers from last year’s team, including reigning Most Outstanding Diver Award winner Alex Marra. In addition to Marra, six-time A-10 Coach of the Year Sean McNamee returns standouts Michael Pilyugin, Michael White and Matthew Goettler.
After holding a slim lead over second place UMass entering the final day at last year’s A-10 Championship meet, the Brown and White were unable to complete it’s bid for a third straight championship, coming up 20.5 points short.
For McNamee, now entering his 24th season at the helm, this year will present a new set of challanges. The Bonnies graduated a talented senior class, and lost another key swimmer to early graduation.
“By no means are we as talented as we were last year,” McNamee said “We graduated a huge class,”
Coach McNamee is not putting a seventh conference championship out of the realm of possibility, but it’s going to take a full team efort.
“We’ve got the talent to be able to do it, especially with the with the returning class,”
“We need a lot of contributions from our sophomore class, we will be leaning on them heavily to really pick up the slack that we need,”
With a lot of the veteran leadership now gone, MacNamee will look to his large incoming freshman class of nine swimmers to fill some of the void.
“It’s a large group of freshman,” McNamee said “We have nine freshman that we are obviously going to have to lean on heavily.”
Other than the newcomers, McNamee is hoping for big contributions from his returning swimmers
“Those that are returning are going to be our leaders, they are the ones who have been here, seen it, tasted it,” He said.
“They are the ones that have a little sting from coming up short last year,”
Coach McNamme and the Bonnies will get a look at what they have this Saturday when they will see their first race action since begining training more than a month ago.
“This is a dress rehearsal for whats going to come on later in the year,” McNamee added. “It’s a great opportunity for us to get out of here, and see someone else to race against”
Swimming news courtesy of St. Bonaventure Swimming & Diving.
