South Suburban Blue swim title goes to Tinley Park

Forced to practice elsewhere when their home pool was shut down for three weeks late in the season, the Tinley Park Titans adopted a new team motto.

“You can drain our pool, but you can’t drain our spirit.”

Showing that spirit, the Titans dominated Saturday’s South Suburban Blue meet, winning with 260 points to host Oak Forest’s 212. Lemont finished third with 207.

“It was tough, but I think we handled it really well,” Tinley Park’s Hannah Egan said. “Our athletic director (Mike Mongan) did a great job getting us a pool by the next day, and we took advantage of the pool time we had.”

Tinley Park had nine first-place finishers, including Egan in the 200-yard freestyle (2:07.80) and 500 freestyle (5:35.22).

Other top finishers included Kylie Shook in the 200 IM (2:23.75) and 100 backstroke (1:04.53), Hannah Schultz in the 100 butterfly (1:00.69), Morgan Zantor in the 100 free (58.58) and all three relay teams, the 200 medley (1:57.36), 200 free (1:46.63) and 400 free (3:52.96).

Oak Forest’s second-place finish was led by Leanne Latocha’s first-place finishes in the 50 free (24.99) and 100 breaststroke (1:08.20). Rachel Zwartz edged out teammate Emily LaRusso 295.65 to 283.65 for the diving title for the Bengals.

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