Mercury All-Area: Daniel Boone’s Guiliano boosts budding resume with state gold

Chris Guiliano was often reluctant to get into the pool as a youngster when his parents took him and his older brother Joseph to swim lessons.

“I was really into it, Chris not so much,” Joseph Guiliano said. “He was one of the kids who would run around and kind of ask his mom, ‘Can we go home now?’”

As Guiliano has spent nearly a month away from the pool, sheltered at home with his family like the rest of the state, it’s funny looking back on those days.

In the past three years at Daniel Boone, Guiliano has turned himself into not just one of the top ranked swimmers in the state, but the country, ranking No. 40 in the Class of 2021 by CollegeSwimming.

Guiliano has three District 3 gold medals, multiple Berks County records, six PIAA medals and most recently a state gold, helping him earn the 2019-20 Mercury Area Boys Swimmer of the Year.

The Daniel Boone junior has not just grown into a sensational swimmer, he’s also grown quite fond of a sport he was once hesitant to dip his toes in.

“I would say about three years ago when I started improving,” Guiliano said of when he fell in love with swimming. “Getting better at something makes you enjoy it. Just like the up and coming and the rise to becoming who you want to be is always a fun journey.”

Although he also played basketball up until eighth grade, Guiliano has been a year-round swimmers since he was nine or 10 years old — even if he didn’t always like it that much.

“My brother, he was a huge, huge role for that,” Guiliano said of Joseph, who now swims at Albright. “I can’t thank him enough for getting me into the sport. He was kind of the factor to get me to swim. I looked up to him when I was younger, and I still do. Watching his practices day in and day out, I just wanted to be like him.”

Daniel Boone coach Chris Breedy, who coached the Guiliano’s at the Boyertown YMCA, said he started to show a real talent by the time he was 12 years old. It took no time for him to stand out at the high school level.

After finishing fourth and fifth respectively in the 100 free and 200 IM at the District 3 championships in 2018, Guiliano qualified for states in both events as a freshman. He made the ‘B’ finals of the 200 IM, placing 14th, and finished 20th in the 100 free, where he was the lone freshman competing.

The early success Guiliano had in his first high school season made him realize the podium potential he had over the next three years. Guiliano said in the offseason between his freshman and sophomore years he trained harder, grew a little bit and made some minor tweaks to his technique.

He took another leap forward as a sophomore, winning the 100 free and claiming silver in the 200 IM at the District 3 championship before grabbing his first two state medals. At the 2019 PIAA championships, Guiliano finished fifth in the 200 IM and sixth in the 100 free, where he was the only one not a junior or senior in either final.

“He’s the whole package,” Breedy said. “Talent all the way around in all the strokes, all the distances. That’s pretty rare. I’ve seen it in swimming on the national level…There’s a lot of people with talent but not a lot of people who have the drive to win and to train more importantly. Everybody wants to win, but nobody wants to train or is willing to go through what it takes to be like that.”

Guiliano entered the 2019-20 season knowing winning a state gold medal was a real possibility, especially with a switch from the 200 IM to the 200 free.

On the way to states, Guiliano broke District 3 and Berks County records in the 100 and 200 free. His time of 44.83 in the 100 free at the District 3 championships broke the previous meet record of 45.55 set in 2013. In the 200 free, Guiliano raced past previous record owner Roanoke Shirk of Muhlenberg with a time of 1:38.80 for the new District 3 mark.

Guiliano entered the 2020 PIAA Class 3A Championships seeded second in the 200 free and third in the 100 free and finished the preliminaries in the same spot. The Blazers’ junior bested La Salle’s Liam Smith, who is bound for Notre Dame next year, by 0.14 seconds in the final of the 200, finishing with a time of 1:35.81 to claim his first state gold medal.

It was a satisfying end to a junior season that was cut a day short when the second day of the PIAA championships, including the 100 free finals, was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“It was really crazy,” Guiliano said. “In the moment it was something I couldn’t believe. It gave me a lot of confidence going into Day 2. It’s a shame Day 2 had to come to an end. I think this whole situation was for the best, play it safe. It was really exciting after winning that race.”

Along with winning a gold medal, Guiliano also did something else this year at states he hadn’t been able to in his first two trips: race in a relay.

Boone’s 200 free relay team of Guiliano, senior Jacob Santos, junior Justin Eves and sophomore Jesse Wounderly became the first Boone relay team to qualify for states, where they finished 15th. Guiliano swam the first 50 meters in a Berks record time of 20.27 seconds.

When Guiliano’s older brother began swimming at Boone in 2014, the program was not a school-sponsored sport and started with just two swimmers. Even when Guiliano arrived at Boone for Joseph’s senior season in 2017-18 and the two competed at the PIAA championships individually, the Blazers did not send a relay team to districts or states.

Guiliano’s rise to the top of the state’s swim world has coincided with a swoon in the Daniel Boone swimming program.

“I hope to inspire kids in this area to possibly want to join the team,” Guiliano said. “We had somewhere around 25 kids this year, and I think it was more than last year. If we can keep getting more kids around this area to participate in the sport, I think that’s always a great thing.”

Guiliano will have one more season at Boone to add to an already impressive resume. Along with adding another state gold medal or possibly two, he said he thinks he has a realistic shot at shaving off two seconds and breaking the state record (1:33.90) in the 200 free as a senior.

A number of top college programs are interested in Guiliano. Breedy, whose swimming resume includes being an NCAA National Champion at the University of Florida and a member of the U.S. National Team from 1976-1980, thinks Guiliano is not too far away from competing at some of swimming’s highest levels.

While the goals become loftier and the expectations heavier every year, Guiliano has maintained a passion and drive for the sport his younger self had little interest in.

“That’s the thing though is, I definitely think it has (weighed on him), but he’s really good at handling that kind of stuff,” Joseph Guiliano said. “Anything at this level, it doesn’t matter what you do in life, whether it’s a different sport or you’re more academically focused, there’s a lot of pressure in life. The same thing goes with swimming.

“I honestly think it’s amazing that Chris can still have such a healthy life at school, academically and socially and also pursue this as a fun, great thing for him to do.”