As Carly Misiewicz takes the helm of the Princeton High girls’ swimming team, she knows there are plenty of resources at her disposal.
Starting with a quartet of junior stars Brianna Romaine and Maddie Deardorff together with sophomore Melinda Tang and precocious freshman Abbey Berloco, PHS boasts some high quality performers.
“You can’t beat it, a sprinter (Romaine) and a distance swimmer (Deardorff) and Melinda Tang in the mix; she can do anything,” said Misiewicz, the successor to longtime PHS head coach Greg Hand, who retired last June.
“Abbey Berloco can do anything as well. So those four girls are frontrunners across the board. We lost a couple of girls but we returned almost everybody so we are definitely looking really good.”
Last week in its season opener against Hopewell Valley, PHS looked really, really good, rolling to a 125-45 win over the Bulldogs.
Victors for the Little Tigers in the December 2 meet included Tang in the 200 freestyle and 100 butterfly, Deardorff in the 200 individual medley and 500 free, Berloco in the 50 free, along with Romaine in the 200 free and 100 backstroke.
Berloco lived up to advance notices in a big way. “Abbey set the 50 free record today by .11 (24.58) so that was a great swim,” said Misiewicz, a former standout swimmer at Rider University who joined the PHS program last year as an assistant coach. “I heard all of this talk last year about her and that we have a great swimmer coming up.”
PHS is getting some great leadership from its core of veterans which includes seniors Hannah Ash, Jessica Bai, Lopa Krishnan, and Stephanie Tam along with junior standouts Romaine and Deardorff.
“The juniors and seniors are really stepping it up as well as far as leadership roles and taking charge of the team,” said Misiewicz, whose team hosts WW/P-N on December 16.
“They were getting the freshmen and letting them know what a meet is like, getting in the water and warming up. It’s nice that I can trust them. I can do the things that I need to do before meets and get things ready and they will do what they need to do to get the team in the water and get them ready, pumped, and excited.”