First Posted: 3/6/2015
The backstroke was good to them.
Pittston Area’s Brandon Winters and Mia Nardone will each be competing in the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Swimming Championships on March 11-14 at Bucknell University’s Kinney Natatorium.
Winters and Nardone picked up gold medals in the backstroke at the PIAA District 2 Class AAA championships. Those gold medals earned them a spot in the state meet.
Pittston Area, as a team, finished fourth in District 2. The 200 medley relay and the 400 free relay teams each broke school records in the process.
The team of Nardone, Adison Hazlet, Erin Senese and Arianna Boccardi broke the school’s 27-year record in the 200 medley relay with a time 1:58.40. That time was good for a bronze medal at the championships.
Kassity Roche, Senese, Boccardi and Nardone then shattered the 2006 school record in the 400 relay by almost five seconds.
Pittston Area copped 20 medals as a team with the majority of its kids participating.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with how they performed as a team,” coach Amy Hazlet said. “That’s just an indication of how they worked all season. This was the greatest districts I ever had as a coach.”
The backstroke is something fairly new to Nardone. For two of the past three years, Nardone has made the state championships in the 100 fly. In last year’s event, she finished 16th. She finished in 13th as a freshman. In that time span, her times have gone down.
But now, she’ll be competing in the 100 backstroke for the first time.
At district’s, Nardone won the event with a time of 1:00.37 to propel her to the state competition.
“She really came around, mentally, on the second day,” Hazlet said. “She did absolutely everything she needed to. She really dominated that race.”
The fly has always been Nardone’s most important event, she said after the district championships. She decided to try the backstroke this year instead of the individual medley. Nardone finished second in the 100 fly at the district championships.
“She’s always been a strong butterflyer,” Hazlet said. “She swam the IM the first couple years and did well. She concentrated on the backstroke last year.
After earning two silvers in his career at Pittston Area, Winters finally broke through and got to the top spot on the podium in the 100 backstroke at the district championships. He finished with a time of 55.47.
Winters suffered through most of the first half of the season with an illness. But he came back stronger than ever. Now he’ll get his first crack in the state competition.
“Brandon is a top-notch kid,” Hazlet said. “He was very determined from the beginning of the year that he was going to make it to states.”
The Pittston Area boys team suffered through the season without a team, due to the lack of participants. But that didn’t stop them from competing on a daily basis.
Winters led the charge.
“For him to go to work every day and work as hard as he did is impressive,” Hazlet said. “He didn’t let that negativity deter his work ethic and his goals.”
Hazlet said both swimmers have set realistic goals for themselves at the state meet. Those goals aren’t to place in any fashion, but to just lower their times and have fun.
“They are both very excited to be going,” Hazlet said. “There are some phenomenal swimmers and a lot of Division 1 kids. They just want to drop their times.”
Both Winters and Nardone are near the top of their class, academically, at Pittston Area.
“That carries over to the pool,” Hazlet said.