By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
High school swimmers who won events at the Northern Kentucky regional championship meet on Saturday received their medals at an awards ceremony with cameras flashing all around them.
That’s something most of them have done countless times since they started competitive swimming as children. But Covington Catholic senior Todd Sheets didn’t get interested in the sport until he was 14 years old so receiving four gold medals at the regional meet was an exciting new experience.
“It’s definitely a big accomplishment for me,” Sheets said. “I just put a lot of energy into it and if you work hard enough anything can happen.”
Sheets finished first in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events and swam on the 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams that set meet records with their winning times. CovCath ended up winning 10 of the 11 swimming events to finish on top in the boys’ regional team standings for the 18th consecutive year.
Sheets, 18, said all three of his teammates in the 400 relay grew up swimming year-round on club teams. While they were practicing and competing in the pool, he was playing football, basketball and baseball. All that changed, however, when cartilage damage in his knees made it too painful for him to run.
“I picked up swimming on the fly when I was in the eighth grade,” Sheets said. “It got to the point where I needed a sport, something to keep me active, so I went ahead and tried swimming and it worked out great for me.”
He was 14 years old when he started swimming on YMCA teams. That was the only competitive experience he had when he enrolled at CovCath, but he won a regional gold medal in the 400 freestyle relay during his freshman season.
Sheets continued to improve and swam on two winning relay teams in both the 2013 and 2014 regional meets. He also won his first individual event last year when he placed first in the 100 freestyle. But his best day in the pool came last Saturday when he won two individual events and two relays in the regional meet. And he did it with a boisterous group of CovCath students in the stands cheering for him.
“The Colonel Crazies are just a trademark of our school,” Sheets said of the cheering section. “At all of our sporting events, when they get rowdy everybody on the field or on the court or in the pool, no matter what sport it is, we all get fired up and that makes us perform even better.”
Sheets won the 50 freestyle on Saturday even though he did not have the top qualifying time in the preliminary heats. He than placed first in the 100 freestyle for the second straight year. He was added to the 200 freestyle relay team for the regional finals and helped set a new meet record (1:28.63). In the final event of the day, he swam on the 400 freestyle relay team that also set a new meet record (3:09.33).
Winning four gold medals in one meet is something Sheets had never done before. He owes a lot of his success to CovCath coach Richard Dickmann, who gave him an opportunity to develop his skills on the high school team.
“I think he was not only surprised but very excited to see where I could go as a swimmer, being that I was fresh in the water and lacked experience when I came there (to CovCath),” Sheets said of his coach.
The senior swimmer also draws inspiration from the memory of his father, Todd, who passed away 12 years ago.
“He taught me a lot of stuff about being strong and getting through things by doing what you have to do,” he said of his father. “I definitely think that way when I’m in the water, especially in the 50 free when I have to put my head down and can’t breathe the whole way.”
Based on times from the four regional meets around the state, CovCath and Louisville St. Xavier should be the leading contenders for the boys’ team title at the Kentucky state championship meet to be held Feb. 26-28 at the University of Louisville.
“Going into (regional), we knew St. X is going to be our main competitor at state and we were just looking to throw down our best times and show them what we have,” Sheets said.
St. Xavier has won the boys’ state championship every year since 1989. CovCath placed second the last three years with the scoring margin getting closer each time. Last year, St. Xavier won by just 33 points.
Sheets and the other seniors on the CovCath team want this to be the year that they end St. Xavier’s state meet winning streak and bring the championship trophy back to CovCath for the first time since 1983.
“It’s going to be more than exciting,” Sheets said of the state meet. “We still have another two weeks so we’ve got to get back in the grind (at practice), but we’ll be ready.”
Terry Boehmker, NKyTribune sports writer, is former sportswriter and editor for The Kentucky Post. He is an award-winning writer with extensive background in both print and digital. Reach him at terryboe@yahoo.com.