Boys’ high school swim season is over and done within the state of Michigan, which means the 2019 Dream Team can be revealed.
Yearly since 2008, the Michigan Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association has named an all-state “Dream Team.” High school boys’ swimming in Michigan is broken into three different state championships, which means there’s potential for 27 separate individual state champions to be crowned.
Per the MISCA website, the Dream Team is made up of athletes from all three state meets and is based on the following criteria:
- The fastest state meet performance in each event at finals; relay lead off times are considered.
- An athlete may only receive the honor in 1 individual event. If an athlete has multiple #1 performances the runner-up performances in each event are factored in. The better of the runner-up swims is chosen based on the NISCA Power Point scores.
- If there is a tie in the relays both teams will be chosen.
- If there is an individual tie and neither swimmer is #1 in another event both swimmers will be chosen.
2019 Dream Team members and their teams and performances are listed below. Full results: click for D1, D2, and D3.
| EVENT | SWIMMER | TIME | SCHOOL | DIVISION |
| 200 free | Eric Hieber | 1:38.92 | Walled Lake Western | 2 |
| 200 IM | Derek Maas | 1:46.70 | Holland West Ottowa | 1 |
| Diving | Cayden Petrak | 520.20 | St. Johns | 3 |
| 100 fly | Niklas Eberly | 47.79 | Dexter | 2 |
| 50 free | Cam Peel | 19.91 | Spring Lake | 3 |
| 100 free | Henry Schutte | 44. | Grand Rapids Forest Hills | 1 |
| 500 free | Alexander Capizzo | 4:27.44 | Fraser | 2 |
| 100 back | Riley VanMeter | 48.95 | Holland Christian | 3 |
| 100 breast | Travis Nitkiewicz | 55.37 | Northville | 1 |
| 200 medley relay | Derek Maas, Khadin Soto, Gavin Temple, Kevin Maas | 1:31.01 | Holland West Ottowa | 1 |
| 200 free relay | Joey Wachter, Sam Sella, Kevin Losee, Cam Peel | 1:22.88 | Spring Lake | 3 |
| 400 free relay | Kevin Losee, Charles Brown, Joey Wachter, Cam Peel | 3:03.66 | Spring Lake | 3 |
Because the Dream Team must include a different swimmer for each individual event, MISCA had to decide which events to favor for its double individual state champions. For example, University of Michigan commit Cam Peel was MISCA’s fastest swimmer in both the 50 and 100 free (out of Division II), but Henry Schutte (Division I) was named to the team in his stead in the 50.
Cam Peel is Division III, not II
This Dream Team idea is fantastic! One minor note regarding the last sentence in the article: Travis and Derek tied in prelims of the 200 IM, but Derek touched the wall first in finals with a 1:46.70.
Interesting to see how other states would stack up against this dream team.
I swam at the PIAA AAA states this weekend and could say all our finals had at least one, of not two performances under those times. It’s crazy how fast high school swimming is getting.