Haldane Swimmers Make a Splash

Merged varsity teams offer chance to compete

Haldane High School students Thomas Locitzer, Eloise Pearsall and Dominica Awananch have been making a splash while competing as swimmers this year, but not for their home school. 

With Haldane short of enough swimmers to field a team, they joined teams that include students from multiple schools — Pearsall and Awananch with swimmers from Croton-Harmon and Hendrick Hudson this past fall and Locitzer with students from the same schools, along with Peekskill, for the past two winters. 

Pearsall, a senior who began swimming at age 6, had spent her first three falls at Haldane competing on the school’s cross-country team, which she captained. But she took matters into her own hands for her final year, proposing to Athletic Director Tom Cunningham that she and other Haldane students swim with the Croton/Hendrick Hudson team. 

“I’ve been with the same people since kindergarten mostly, so it was cool being able to do a school thing with new people,” she said. 

Both she and Locitzer are not total fish out of water, having been teammates with the other schools’ swimmers with the Patriot Swim Team club program, which is based in Beacon.

Locitzer, a junior who said he has been swimming for as long as he can remember, competed for eight years for the Patriot Swim Team. The pandemic temporarily halted the program, and Locitzer kept swimming by joining Peekskill’s merged team during his sophomore year. Peekskill had opened its team to students from Haldane, Hendrick Hudson and Croton-Harmon. 

He said that first season, during which his parents drove him to daily practices and meets, differed greatly from the challenges he faced as a freshman on the Haldane football team. He was relatively unacquainted with football, but at Peekskill he was an experienced swimmer on a team with many first-timers. 

“If I wasn’t good at swimming, I don’t know if I would have liked it,” said Locitzer, who was named All-League last year. “But I was the second or third best on the team, so most of them [teammates] liked me because of that.” 

Locitzer, whose specialty is the breaststroke, was usually allowed to complete his assigned sets at practice independently, rather than with a coach. But compared to the club team, he said he has less freedom to choose the races in which he will compete.

Pearsall also swam for Patriot Swim and many of her teammates from that team were members of the Croton/Hendrick Hudson merger. Beginning in August, Pearsall and Awananch traveled 40 minutes each morning to Yorktown High School for 90-minute practices. 

“It helped that I have my driver’s license,” said Pearsall. “It was a lot, but it was worth it.” 

Socially, the transition was relatively seamless (aside from the lack of Haldane representation on CRO-HUD merchandise), she said. The Croton and Hendrik Hudson students were “super welcoming,” said Pearsall. 

At the team’s senior meet, Pearsall and 11 other swimmers were honored, and the team also recognized academic staff members for their support. Pearsall invited Jackie McGrath, a social studies teacher, and Awananch invited Barbra Jennings, an English as a New Language teacher. Both teachers received varsity letters from the student-athletes.

There was something else to celebrate that day. The merged team defeated Wappingers Central, 52-43, for its third win of the season. Both Awananch (50-yard freestyle in 44.84) and Pearsall (100-yard freestyle in 1:05.48) had personal-best times. 

Pearsall, who will study broadcast and digital journalism at Syracuse University in the fall, wishes she had proposed the Haldane merger with Croton and Hendrick Hudson sooner, but looks forward to seeing it continue. “It’d be cool to be able to go back to Cold Spring and see that I started something,” she said.