St. Joe’s continues to build swimming program back to state championship level

The glory days of swimming at Saint Joseph High School may soon be coming back as a new golden age.

The Falcons have a storied history as one of New Jersey’s best in the pool. They have won 22 state championships including 12 in a row from 1980-91, and they have featured stars such as Bobby Savulich, a 2005 graduate who swam at the University of Michigan and in the Olympic Trials.

The program recently went into a lull but is on the rise again, as St. Joe’s advanced to a state final for the first time in 13 years before falling to Pingry on Feb. 17 in the Non-Public North championship.

“We feel more confident and we’re feeling a lot better than we were. The team is definitely building up again,” said sophomore Braden Michaels, who took 10th place in the 100 backstroke at New Jersey’s Meet of Champions on March 1. “We see that, and that’s the first step to becoming that dominant force that we were years ago.”

Simply put, there’s been an infusion of talent combined with strong leadership under second-year head coach Chris Martin.

Martin, a former swimmer at Toms River South and Rowan, has been at St. Joe’s for 17 years but was previously the athletic trainer. As he began teaching full-time and the team needed a new swimming coach, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I’ve only known him as my coach in high school because I just started last year, but he is a really big part of the team,” Michaels said. “He is the center of the team. He brings the team together. He makes sure everybody’s included, and we all make sure we’re all included. The team aspect is very, very nice. Everybody’s happy, everybody’s cheering for each other, everybody’s supportive. And we’re all kind of like a family.”

The Falcons accomplished their primary goal this season of winning the Greater Middlesex County Championships, which they hadn’t done since 2020.

“Once we got the county title back, it was like, ‘Alright, we got some momentum. Let’s keep working,’” said Martin, whose team went 8-1 in dual meets. “Me and the coaches just wanted to change the culture of the program. They had kind of gone south in the last couple years, and we’re trying to turn it around. I think we did a pretty good job as far as getting the kids wanting to swim and swim for each other.”

The challenge is that being elite in swimming requires year-round dedication, but some clubs are resistant to letting their kids swim on high school teams. But Martin was able to convince junior Reid Stellatella, who didn’t swim for the previous St. Joe’s regime, to come out this season.

That paid dividends as Stellatella was undefeated in the 200 freestyle up until the state final and qualified for the Meet of Champions. Junior Anthony Vasilov and senior Tim Kou also performed well enough to represent St. Joe’s at that meet, and the school had one medley relay and two freestyle relay teams.

Martin is excited as well about developing for the future with talented freshmen such as Neil Sethi and Dylan Mora, especially since the school is currently building a new weight room.

“There’re always things we can tweak and work on. With some of the top-tier guys, it’s very, very minor things: putting their elbow a little bit higher … getting off their turns a little bit faster,” Martin said. “It’s our guys that are swimming in the outside lanes, the slower guys, that that’s where a lot of the skill and technique stuff comes in.”

Michaels, an Edison native who has swum for most of his life at the Fanwood-Scotch Plains YMCA, says being at the top of his game starts with a daily commitment to practices. He also studies the technical aspects of collegiate and Olympic swimmers on video, with the objective of building good new habits within his strokes.

In the Non-Public North final, Michaels won the 100 backstroke and the 100 butterfly and was part of the Falcons’ first-place relay teams in the 200 freestyle and 400 freestyle with Vasilov, Stellatella, Mora and junior Robert Noble. Vasilov won the 100 freestyle.

Martin praised Michaels for swimming the butterfly this season and consistently improving his times because St. Joe’s had been weaker in that stroke. Michaels was happy to step up for the team, but he is only satisfied with a personal-best time if it wins a race for his team, which highlights a difference between club and high school swimming.

“You don’t want to let your team down. You want to do it for the team,” said Michaels, who also aspires to swim in college. “That’s definitely a reason that I swim high school.”

Michaels believes that the recent success at St. Joe’s will lead to more swimmers joining the program and helping the Falcons win their first state title since 2006.

“We’re going into the season with the goal of making it to the state championship and winning it next year, and we’re all going to put everything we need to put into it to get there,” Michaels said. “I think we have a genuine shot at doing it. I’m excited.”