East Brunswick has chance to end St. Joseph's streak of 39 straight GMC swim championships

As the St. Joseph High School boys swim team continued to win event after event, the crowd attending the 2004 Greater Middlesex Conference championship meet grew more and more quiet.

Excitement finally made its way through the bleachers when Brian Gartner, one of several All-Americans in the St. Joseph lineup, took his spot in lane three for the 100 backstroke alongside Old Bridge’s Michael Pietrusinski, a Polish National Team member.

Pietrusinski, who Gartner touched out in a dual meet earlier that season, was the last GMC swimmer with a chance at preventing St. Joseph, which was on its way to posting the most dominant performance in conference championship history, from sweeping all 11 events, a feat yet to be accomplished.

The instant the starter's buzzer sounded, the crowd rose to its collective feet, and for 54.53 seconds, spectators, who previously had been rooting for a dozen other schools, united in a show of solidarity against St. Joseph, screaming for Pietrusinski. When he edged Gartner by 0.16 seconds, a thunderous roar ensued.

"I thought a giant disco ball might come down from the roof and everyone might start getting down to some '70s music,” St. Joseph head coach Steve Whittington said at the time in reaction to the celebratory atmosphere.

The moment, now 14 years old, illustrates more so than any other how the rest of the conference feels about St. Joseph’s decades of dominance. As much as the tight-knit swimming community absolutely respects the Falcons, they have developed as much disdain for their perpetual winning ways.

St. Joseph has won 39 consecutive county or conference championships, the longest such run in any sport in any county in state history.

The streak, which began in 1979, may be in peril, as East Brunswick, which tied St. Joseph in a dual meet earlier this season, has an even chance, according to Bears head coach Sean Carney, of dethroning the perennial power at this year’s conference championship meet, which will be contested at the Perth Amboy YMCA on Friday.

“I think it’s as 50-50 as you can imagine,” Carney said. “I think it’s basically just split down the middle, and it’ll come down to how the GMC is scored. Some events they are better and others we are better. It’s going to be a battle the whole way, kind of similar to our dual meet, where the energy was tremendous. Both sides of the pool were going crazy. There was just so much competitiveness in the place.”

With its ability to draw from multiple towns as a regional school, St Joseph has forever maintained a competitive advantage over its public-school counterparts, using its reputation in the pool to attract New Jersey’s best swimmers, resulting in another amazing stretch of 12 consecutive state titles from 1980-91.

Excluding the 2014 conference championship meet, which St. Joseph won by a mere eight points over East Brunswick, the Falcons have outdistanced the runner-up in their other nine titles over the last decade by an average of 179 points.

“It’s always been St. Joe’s running away with it,” Carney said. “I think our boys team would really feel good about stopping them at 40. They have a good group of kids who are coached well, but we’ve got a chance. We are going to show up and make them sweat a little bit, try to get as close as we can. This is really the first year since I’ve been coaching that we have a legitimate chance of finally upsetting them.”

Current St. Joseph head coach Dan Cahill, now in his second season after succeeding Whittington, said some opponents have, in good natured-ribbing, chided his swimmers about the streak coming to an end.

“They are friends (with competitors) because they swim with them on club,” Cahill said. “They are being told, almost on a regular basis, that they are going down. They just kind of nod their heads, and that’s exactly what I want them to do. When it comes time to race, show up and back up the words, which is what they’ve been doing.”

St. Joseph’s Michael Botting (100 back) and Mike D’Esposito (100 breast) are favored to win individual events, while Metuchen’s Julian Park (50 free and 100 butterfly) and Wardlaw-Hartridge’s Logan D’Amore (200 free and 500 free) are expected to be double winners. Keren Huang of J.P. Stevens, whose school should also be regarded as a contender for the team title after the Hawks lost a dual meet to St. Joseph by just six points earlier this month, is favored in the 200 IM. The 100 freestyle is wide open.

Based on those projections, East Brunswick may not win an individual event, but the Bears expect to flex their depth in every race and fare well in all three relays. So, however, does St. Joseph.

“One of the things I like to tell my guys is first and second are nice, but really the depth wins the meet,” Cahill said. “Our three and four guys are really the ones that win it for us. We might not be pulling in first and second places like we were (in years past), but our depth is there. I think that’s how it’s going to happen this year.”

Cahill, who graduated from Red Bank Catholic, where he never swam against St. Joseph but was more than familiar with the program’s aura and mystique, said he does not want to be the coach under whose direction the school loses its first championship.

“No one is really coming up to me to say, ‘You better not lose it,’” Cahill said. “I’m putting that on myself, so that’s kind of where I’m at. I think East Brunswick and J.P. Stevens are definitely major players this year. I think that those two schools are really our biggest threat. Each school has their studs that we’ve got to worry about and think about. I think overall it’s going to be tough this year, but I think we are definitely going to do it. I have the utmost confidence in my swimmers. I trust them and they know what to do. Falcons never back down.”

East Brunswick is led by Maxwell Wang (team record holder in the 100 back), Jacob Snow (100 free and 100 back), Aditya Vidyadharan (200 IM, 100 breast and 100 free), Maxim Alexeev (500 and 200 free) and Ryan VanDeVeen (100 breast).

Neither East Brunswick nor St. Joseph was at full strength when the schools met in early December. The Bears have since added Albert Chen, a transfer from Lawrenceville Prep, while the Falcons have added Marco Niro, a transfer from Christian Brothers Academy. Both swimmers add intrigue to an already compelling storyline, which includes a school rivalry that is among the best in the entire state.

“Every single swimmer that ever swam for East Brunswick and any swimmer that’s ever swam for any public school swim team has had aspirations of winning this meet, and this is a year we actually have a chance to do that,” Carney said. “It will be a tremendous meet for everybody involved. Even the teams that are not competing for first and second place, it would be just a memorable experience for everybody. It’s going to be big, not just for the people at the meet, but for our school district and the town, as well.”

Fourteen years ago, when Gartner lost to Pietrusinski, St. Joseph went on to win 10 events, establish four meet records, three pool marks, register the most conference championship points to that date in school history, place first-through-fourth in four individual events and win the conference title by a meet record 285 points that still stands.

No giant disco ball fell from the rafters while ‘70s music blared that day, but the same electric atmosphere that captivated an entire crowd for one single minute during the backstroke in 2004 is expected to last for the duration of this year’s conference championship meet.