The Blue Eagles produced their best dual-meet records in program history.
Nazareth swimming coach Seth Urffer was a three-time District 11 qualifier and two-time state qualifier when he swam at Parkland from 2000-2004.
When he took over the Blue Eagles head coaching job three years ago, Urffer wanted to bring certain things he learned at Parkland to Nazareth, specifically one major goal.
"It taught me a lot about work ethic, commitment and just what it was like to be a team and trust your teammates to pull you through some hard times," Urffer said about swimming at Parkland. "The best part about that is when I first came up to Nazareth, the kids were very splintered. There were little groups all over the place. And the first thing we tried to implement, outside of any training regimen, was that team unification. It's taken us, I would say, three years and this year they finally clicked. Everyone finally joined as one unit and you got to see that effort pay off, in the record, the way the kids swam. So that's the biggest accomplishment that I would consider, is not how well they did, but how close they ended up becoming."
"His big push for all three years and especially this season was team camaraderie and just teamwork in general," Nazareth senior Victoria Palochik said. "Not only was his support helping us push forward and working to our full capabilities and also hitting our max potential, was also him encouraging us to have more pasta parties, to have more gatherings, have everybody be a team and be one cohesive unit. And that definitely helped in the long run this season."
The team coming together definitely paid off this season as the Blue Eagles put together their best seasons ever in both boys and girls competition.
For his building of the program and guiding Nazareth to a special season in the pool, Urffer is the 2017 lehighvalleylive Swimming Coach of the Year.
"I think he made a huge difference," Blue Eagles senior Drew Blair said. "Never in a season have I seen so many people drop so much time in events. And it's not even just beginner swimmers. It's good swimmers going in and dropping a huge amount of time. It was actually crazy to watch."
The Nazareth boys team shared the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference title with Emmaus after putting together an 11-0 conference record. The Blue Eagles finished the season with an overall mark of 12-1.
On the girls side, the Blue Eagles were 12-1 overall and 10-1 in the EPC.
It was the best dual-meet records in Nazareth swimming history.
The Nazareth girls were fourth and the Blue Eagles boys finished fifth in the District 11 championship team standings.
"I thought it was possible. There is a lot of talent here at Nazareth," Urffer said about finding this much success only three years after he took over the program. "The problem is harnessing that talent. Getting the kids to not only commit to it, but believe in it as well. That's what I would pride on the most is to get them to actually believe. Everything else is actually their accomplishments. Our goal was just to give them that little edge to push them where they could go."
"Definitely over the last three years, there's been tons of changes and they've all been really positive changes. They really helped the team culture and just the team environment," said Palochik, who will swim at Drexel University.
Palochik won district gold in the 50 freestyle and the 100 butterfly. She also joined forces with sophomore Hannah Wasson and freshmen Coral McBride and Raquelle Roesch to win district gold in the 200 medley relay.
Nazareth junior Steven Stasolla won the 3A district diving title and placed sixth at the state championships.
Roesch was second in the 50 freestyle at districts to make it a gold-silver sweep for the Blue Eagles. Freshman Erika Wong, Wasson, Roesch and Palochik placed fourth in the 400 freestyle relay at districts.
Blair teamed up with sophomores Blake Nesbitt and Peter Huleatt and freshman Gabe Laslo to take the district bronze medal in the 200 medley relay. Laslo was third in the 100 butterfly at districts. Nesbitt finished third at districts in the 100 backstroke and sophomore Logan Holt was fourth in the event.
"He always made sure we were focused," Blair said of Urffer. "Didn't let anyone slack off. And other swimmers toward the end of the year, everybody was super focused too and it just rubbed off on everyone. Everybody was yelling at each other if they weren't working hard and everybody was pushing each other, which I think made a difference this year out of all the other years."
"Seth definitely tries to get to know you as a person," Palochik said. "He's friendly and he'll be nice and he'll goof around with you. Swimming is such an intense sport where it's all about how you feel, how you're doing. It's a self-supporting sport. He would be there to help you along, give any advice, but he was also there to be stern, to be strict when needed if you were goofing off or you weren't doing what you should've been doing. He has a little bit of everything, I guess you could say."
Another major highlight this season for the Blue Eagles was the boys team beating Liberty 93-90 on Feb. 2. It came a year after the Hurricanes handled Nazareth 105-69.
"Beginning of the season, he (Urffer) said that our goal in the next couple years was to beat Liberty and then we beat them this year. Surprised him, surprised me, surprised every one," Blair said.
In the win over Liberty, Blair won the 500 freestyle, finished third in the 200 free and teamed with Nesbitt, Huleatt and Laslo to finish second in the 200 medley relay and Matt Keller, Nesbitt and Laslo to finish second in the 400 freestyle relay. And Blair did it all under the weather.
"One of the biggest things that we pulled out of that meet, not just in terms of the score, but as a team is Drew was sick that day and instead of taking the day off, allowing himself to recover, he decided to step up as a teammate and swim through an illness to give the boys team a shot," Urffer said. "I would say it's the first time in my three years here where I saw someone sacrifice himself for the team on the boys side for a greater goal. And I think that set the spark then for the next month and a half that got them where they wanted to go."
Urffer also coached Bangor swimmers this season. Slater swimmer Morgan O'Brien was second in the district Class 2A 100 breaststroke and fourth in the 200 individual medley. Cameron Mousley earned a district silver medal in the 500 freestyle. Brenek Strawn of Bangor was third at districts in the 100 butterfly and won bronze in the 100 backstroke. On the girls side, Bangor's district medalist was Amelia O'Brien, who took third in the 50 freestyle.
Urffer, who went to Lycoming College, served as head coach at Allentown Central Catholic for three years before becoming an assistant at Nazareth. After one year as an assistant, Urffer took over the head coaching position with the Blue Eagles.
The 30-year-old South Whitehall Township resident said the biggest thing he learned from his Parkland coach Bob Clark is that your assistants and your athletes are always your biggest asset. So, Urffer made sure to praise assistants Joe Lahovski and Doug Cornish, diving coach Carol Byrnes and others for their contributions to the special season at Nazareth.
"We wouldn't be able to succeed as much as we can without the support of our parents, our administration and our feeder program. Without those three, it would take us a lot longer to try to get up to where we would like to be. They have been very supportive and I hope they continue to be supportive as we go forward," Urffer said.
The coach hopes this season was a start of something really special for Nazareth swimming.
"Being in the Lehigh Valley for so many years, I watched Emmaus and Parkland not only grow but succeed and stay up there for a very long time. I've seen Liberty go up there. I've seen Freedom go up and down, back and forth," Urffer said. "But the one thing when we came in here was we want to try to take Parkland down, we want to try to go after Emmaus. To do that, we can't do what they're doing. It would take us so long to try to catch up to them with their history of their programs succeeding. Doing and trying to replicate what they do would almost be impossible for us to try to catch them. We actually did something completely different. So do I think we can compete with them? Yes, I do. Are we at the pinnacle to compete with them? I still think we have a few steps to go to get there. But when it happens, I think Nazareth is going to be on top for quite a long time."
Josh Folck may be reached at jfolck@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshFolck. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.