Bobby Martinez – Sports WriterÂ
After a successful attempt in winning their fifth consecutive Northeast-10 Conference title, Owls men’s swimming and diving team, led by junior Christopher Curtin who was named Most Outstanding Swimmer for the tournament, are now focused in winning the Metropolitan Championships.
Curtin said there was a lot of hours in preparation him and his team had to do in order to successfully defend their title and is happy his team didn’t quit at any point of the tournament.
“Literally,” said Curtin, “ it’s the hardest thing to do day-in-and -day-out. I just make sure I work as hard as possible with these guys making sure everyone keeps each other motivated to keep coming back to practice and improve.”
Curtin managed to secure wins in three events: 400 individual medley(IM) with a time of 4:01.83, the 200 IM in 1:53.28 and the 200 breaststroke in 2:04.88. Despite Curtin winning those three events, Curtin said he was more pleased that his team won another title.
“It’s huge,” said Curtin. ” It was more of coming back and fighting through it because we were fighting back throughout the whole thing and it was a good win as a whole.”
Curtin, where swimming has been in his family roots stemming from his mother who was a swimmer herself, never enjoyed any other sport as much as swimming he said.
“I’ve been swimming my whole life,” said Curtin. ” My mom was a swimmer. I tried every other sport and found out swimming was my thing. I tried competitive swimming at the age of 10.”
During his time at Wethersfield High School, Curtin won the Eastern Connecticut Conference (ECC) East champion and served as captain his senior year. In his senior year, Curtin knew he had to make one of the toughest decisions an athlete has to make: ‘What college should they attend?’ He said there was two things about Southern Connecticut State University that stuck out when deciding what school would be best for him.
“The atmosphere and the team,” said Curtin. ” It seemed like a very fun place. The guys were very nice and they were real down to earth and that’s what I really enjoyed.”
Just like anyone who walks into a new situation, nervousness and pressure can kick in just like it did for Curtin at first he said. But with a good coaching staff and the successful foundation that Quill has built under his time as head coach, Curtin said he managed to get comfortable with Quill and the coaches and in no time, Curtin did what he does best, which is swim.
“I was real nervous at first,” said Curtin. ” But over time, I built a real close relationship with coach Quill. He’s always been there whether it’s in the pool, classes or out the pool stuff. He’s always there for us no matter what. We eventually grew a personal relationship where we can pretty much talk about almost anything. “
Prior to their NE-10 meet, Curtin, individually, achieved numerous accomplishments his sophomore year. Last season, Curtin won the NE-10 Conference champion in the 200 medley relay and the 400 medley relay. He placed second in the 400 yard medley relay against Saint Rose on Oct. 26, 2012 and also recorded first place in the 200 yard butterfly and second in the 200 yard backstroke on Jan. 18 2013 against Queen College.
Next up for Curtin and his team is the Metropolitan Championships which is set to take place in Piscataway, N.J. Feb. 20-22. Curtin said his mindset is to not only help his team win, but he would like to use this tournament in hopes to secure a spot in Nationals.
“Metros for me,” said Curtin ,” is hoping to make Nationals and keeping this school’s success where we hope to win a sixth title.”
