North Penn boys, girls show depth, talent in wins over Methacton
North Penn coach Jeff Faikish doesn’t like using the terms rebuild or reload when it comes to talking about his team. And the fact of the matter is there might not be any such thing when you’re talking about a team that can win a district title despite a so-called rebuild.
Monday afternoon the Knights and Maidens of North Penn both posted convincing wins over visiting Methacton with scores of 105-69 and 109-72, respectively.
While the times might not have been completely up to Faikish’s liking he acknowledged that there were certain focal points that he wanted his team to work on which was exemplified by junior Shane Markus who after getting touched out in the 200 IM early in the meet rebounded with a nice swim and finish in the 100 breaststroke later in the meet.
“We were looking to clean up a lot of the things that we saw going on early in the season so far,” Faikish said. “The coaching staff as a whole took a look at a lot of the technical mistakes we were seeing and the motivation for today was to go in here, against a team we’re very friendly with, and clean up a lot of the technical mistakes.”
As the meet only represented the fourth meet of the year for North Penn, Faikish explained how he’s still toggling with his lineup to figure out which swimmers will best suited in each event for a championship push in late February/ early March especially for a boys team that is looking to replace 17 senior from a year ago.
“After what we saw at the Upper Dublin meet and at Bucknell we are trying to figure out what the championship line up is going to be,” Faikish said. “Nothing is set in stone and also we have to look at what is developing throughout the state, throughout our league and district.”
As the Knights and Maidens look forward they will hit a bit of ‘hell week’ as the training will start to ramp up as they start to turn its attention to the conference schedule but more importantly the postseason.
“Stealing a line from Clubber Lang from Rocky; ‘the prediction is pain,’” Faikish said of the grueling training up coming. “Over the next few weeks, it’s going to be jack up the yardage; we’re really developing our championship season base over the next few weeks.”
After last week’s loss (for the boys) to Upper Dublin, North Penn knows there is a lot of work to be done between now and then if it thinks it is going to challenge for a District One title something the Knights and Maidens have been quite accustomed to but not quite as much in recent history.
“Hanging banner is something that we love to do but none of it ever comes easy,” Faikish said. “There are a lot great teams out there and we have our work cut out for us.”
