Leonia/Palisades Park swimming team with regular season and championship meet plaques. Congratulations !
….Story by Sean Farrell, Record Sports….
LYNDHURST – The drive for five is complete.
Leonia/Palisades Park was far and away the top team at Saturday’s NJIC Championships and showed that it may be the best team in league history. The Lions rolled to their fifth straight conference title by winning nine of 11 races and scoring almost twice as much as their closest opponent.
Senior Elle Morse was spectacular with firsts in a pair of solo events, while sophomores Katie Rock and Junseo Kim also doubled up on gold.
The bad news for everyone else is that the end isn’t in sight.
“I know that even when I’m gone, this is going to continue to be a dynasty,” said Morse, who helped the Lions set five meet records.
“That’s the best part. I see records going down and what that means to me is that we’re just getting faster. It’s so exciting because this team means the world to me.”
Morse is undoubtedly the face of the Lions’ program. She is tall and athletic, easily cutting through the water with looping strides. She became the program’s first Bergen County champion last winter and did her part again at Saturday’s meet. She picked up her third straight 50-freestyle title and likely would have had four if not for a case of freshman year pneumonia. One lap of swimming usually makes for a crapshoot, but the outcome is never in doubt when Morse dives in the water.
“It’s really just the icing on the cake to a really great career,” Morse said. “I loved swimming with this team so it’s a bittersweet moment for me, being that it’s my last one. But I’m really happy that we came out on top.”
What became clear Saturday is that the next group of Lions is ready to take the baton.
Junseo Kim has instantly become North Jersey’s next star, still undefeated after wins in the butterfly and individual medley. The landscape of Bergen County swimming all changed before the season when Kim and sophomores Katie and Emma Rock decided to come onto the high school scene. Katie Rock was the long-distance ace Saturday, after a being club-only athlete last winter.
“That kid likes to race,” coach Bill Eickelberg said. “She just likes to beat the kid next to her. She’s so much fun to watch, a hard-worker and a competitor. She’s just got it.”
As much as the focus has been on each race, the Lions have also taken time to appreciate a once-in-a-lifetime group. The co-op did the unthinkable when it beat IHA in a Bergen County championship relay, a feat that happened just twice in the last 20 years. With this much speed returning, it’s hard to imagine what’s next.
“Going into the season, I knew that we had a very strong team,” Katie Rock said. “But everything that we’ve done – breaking a county record at the Meet of Champions – is really crazy. It’s so good to see that we’ll keep going and keep getting better.”
NJIC Swim Records / 5 new marks and 1 Tie: Records Page
