Familiar names fill all-time swim/dive roster

WARREN, Mich. — Though activities have been limited by the COVID-19 pandemic these past few months, the one thing that people have found in abundance ... downtime. 

De La Salle Collegiate swim coach Jim Singelyn has made use of some of that downtime. He put together an all-time De La Salle swim and dive dual meet roster, piecing together some of the best swimmers and times in school history. 

"Let's be honest, I don't have a whole lot of other things to do right now," Singelyn said. "It was something fun to do."

Singelyn, who just wrapped up his 10th year coaching at DLS, began putting the list together a few years back and has had to update it a few times over the years. He used the MHSAA and Michigan Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association websites to compile a top-10 list for every event. He has even enlisted some of his swimmers to double-check his work.

He then used all of that information to develop the lineup.

"It wasn't all that difficult to find this stuff, it was just time-consuming," the coach said.  "There were certain year-ranges where I knew what to look for. You hear about kids, even in the years after I graduated. I just wanted to put in the time to do it once. With everything being electronic now, you can find it."

The names on the dual meet roster date back as far as Ron Yokubision, a 1988 Pilot graduate. He's listed in the 200 and 500 freestyle. He was all-state and is a member of the De La Salle Hall of Fame. 

Singelyn ('90), also a Hall of Fame member at the school, is listed in the 50 freestyle and 100 breaststroke. Dave Zulkiewski ('94) is in the lineup, swimming the 50 and 100 freestyles, while David Garry ('04) and Craig Flemming ('07) made the cut in diving and 200 freestyle.

But the vast majority of the names on the roster have all been recent De La Salle graduates. 

"One of the cool things about the lineup was that there were just four names on the list who I didn't coach," Singelyn said. "That kind of made me happy to see. And one of the names I didn't coach was myself."

Names like Zach Milke ('18), Jack Kucharczyk ('16), Daniel Frederick ('18), Josh Hodges ('17), Mitch Livingston ('16), PJ Desmet ('16), Jake Huttenlocher ('17), Jacob Babe' ('17), Isaiah Johnson ('16), Hunter Broski ('18) and Ben Rancilio ('18) all appear multiple times in the lineup.

'You get certain kids who are top-five in every event," Singelyn explained. "So to do a dual-meet lineup, I had to figure out where to put certain people. PJ Desmet and Zach Milke, you could put them anywhere. But in a dual meet, they're only allowed two different individual events, so I had to find the perfect place for them."

There are two current Pilots that made the lineup. Junior Joseph Basha and sophomore Max Swiatkowski dove and swam their way onto the list of the school's best. Basha is one of the three best divers, while Swiatkowski found his name listed among the best backstrokers, along with Milke and Desmet.

"There are a lot of these kids that know each other over the years," Singelyn said. "They see their names on this list and they think, 'I've got a time up there, for my school, that's cool,' "

Familiar names fill all-time swim/dive roster
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