State Champions!

For the third time in the past four years, the Jesuit swimming and diving team completed the season with the ultimate prize: a State Championship.

Sparked by a historic triple-gold medal performance by Nick Shaffer ’21 and incredible depth – a school record 14 Tigers qualified for State and 12 scored points at the State Meet – Jesuit comfortably outdistanced runner-up Fort Lauderdale Pine Crest, 277 to 185, for the Class 2A State title at Sailfish Splash Waterpark in Stuart on Saturday (Nov. 14).

(The team is pictured on the homepage after it was recognized at Convocation on Nov. 20. Please scroll to the bottom for photo slideshows.)

Shaffer led the way Saturday, taking part in two relay victories (the relays count double in the points calculations) while capturing an individual title in the 200 IM (in school record time) and finishing 3rd in the 100 backstroke. Shaffer’s 200 IM and 100 backstroke times both qualify him for All-American consideration.

The three gold medals at a single State Meet ties Shaffer with his eldest brother Tommy Shaffer ’16 for the most in Jesuit history, though the team gold medal earned this year by Nick Shaffer tips the family’s gold medal scale in his favor. Also, Jesuit’s 200 medley relay established a new school record time on Saturday, breaking the mark that Tommy Shaffer helped set in 2016. Middle brother Robbie Shaffer '19 also collected some gold medals, including a medley relay gold in 2018 and the two team golds in 2017-18. 

The Tigers, who captured their 24th straight District title and 12th straight Region crown this season, opened the State Meet by winning the 200 medley relay in record time and led from wire-to-wire. The State Meet results:

RELAYS

·        200 Medley Relay – State Champion: (Shaffer, Liam Schindler ’23, Erick Magalhaes ’23, Sam Prabhakaran ’21) in a school-record time
·        200 Freestyle Relay – 3rd Place: (Geoff Trieloff ’21, Armando Destrade ’23, Ezra Moros ’22, Magalhaes)
·        400 Freestyle Relay – State Champion (Prabhakaran, Trieloff, Schindler, Shaffer)

INDIVIDUAL

·        Shaffer: 1st in the 200 IM in a school-record time, 3rd in the 100 backstroke
·        Prabhakaran: 3rd in the 200 Freestyle and 3rd in the 500 Freestyle
·        Schindler: 4th in the 100 Breaststroke and 6th in the 200 IM
·        Brayden Hohman ’23: 7th in the 100 Butterfly and 13th in the 100 Backstroke
·        Ryan Finster ’22: 8th in the 500 Freestyle and 10th in the 200 Freestyle
·        Trieloff: 10th in the 100 Freestyle
·        Destrade: 11th in the 200 Freestyle
·        Aidan Clements ’24: 12th in the 100 Backstroke
·        Logan Lange ’23: 12th in Diving
·        Jordan Jansen ’23: 13th in the 200 IM and 15th in the 500 Freestyle
·        Dominic Rozance ’22: 14th in the 500 Freestyle
·        Magalhaes: 14th in the 100 Butterfly

When the Tigers captured their first State crown in 2017, it marked the first time in more than seven decades that a Hillsborough County school had won a State swimming title. When Jesuit went back-to-back in 2018, it was the first time in nearly a hundred years, since St. Petersburg High did it in the 1920s, that a Tampa Bay area school had won consecutive State swimming titles.

Now, the Tigers, in head coach Bill Shaffer’s 25th season, rank as the best swimming program in Tampa Bay area annals, and also rank among the State’s elite. The program’s third title gives Jesuit athletics a total of 25 State titles, accomplished in eight different sports: soccer (7), baseball (5), cross country (4), basketball (3), swimming (3), football (1), track & field (1), and wrestling (1).

View a photo slideshow below from the State Meet on Stuart on Nov. 14, and below that is a photo slideshow from Convocation on Nov. 20: