Seton Hall Prep swimming team wins SEC/Essex County title, sets records

WEST ORANGE, NJ — The Seton Hall Prep swimming team captured the Super Essex Conference/Essex County Swimming Championship, featuring record-setting performances, on Monday, Jan. 15, at the  Jersey Aquatic Center in New Providence. 

Following the meet, SHP head coach Joe Alexander said, “Winning this meet means quite a lot. Sometimes I wonder if we take it for granted, but the kids never seem to. They all say, ‘It’s our job to keep it going.’ We saw that fire from them today.” 

The Pirates scored 319 points, having won eight first-place finishes out of the 11 events. Senior co-captains Richard Poplawski and Cormac Rouse were each double individual event champions, with Poplawski winning the 100 butterfly (48.92 seconds) and 100 backstroke (50.97), while Rouse won the 50 freestyle (21.61) and the 100 freestyle (47.85). Poplawski’s butterfly time was a new meet and school record. 

The Pirates’ fifth individual event champion was junior Connor O’Neill in the 200 individual medley in 1 minute, 59.84 seconds. Seton Hall also won all three relays. 

Both freestyle relays were record-breakers. The 200 freestyle relay of Poplawski, Rouse, senior Aryan Kapoor and junior Karl Burghardt won in 1:26.71, breaking the old meet record of 1:28.76. The 400 freestyle relay of Rouse, Kapoor, Poplawski and senior Owen Ripley swam in a meet-record time of 3:12.22, which topped the old record of 3:13.43. The 200 medley relay of Burghardt, O’Neill, Kapoor and senior Pat Miller also won their race in 1:40.03.

Poplawski’s outstanding performance earned him the Cullen Jones Award as the meet’s Most Valuable Swimmer. This is the second time that the Harvard-bound senior has captured this award, as he won it in 2022. Following the meet, Poplawski said, “There are a lot of emotions running through me. There is so much excitement with winning races and records broken, but also sadness because this is the last Essex meet for me and some of my teammates. This was our best performance today. It feels amazing to set records today. I have shared four memorable years with them and I will never forget them, they are my best friends.”

Alexander added, “I was hopeful that our team would get a couple of records today. This senior class is probably our strongest in school history, so we were hopeful they would have a few records to their name.”

  Seton Hall Prep swimming