Things didn’t seem to look good for Columbus St. Charles Preparatory School entering the 400-yard freestyle relay, the final event of the Division I state swimming championship meet.
The Cardinals trailed powerhouse Cincinnati St. Xavier by five team points after St. Charles’ Austin Carpenter, defending champion in the event, finished second in the 100-yard breaststroke by 0.11 of a second. And St. Xavier’s 400 free relay team had four strong swimmers.
But coach Kyle Goodrich said the Cardinals were right where they wanted to be at that point.
“We may have been behind, but Nick McKinley, our assistant coach who’s great at figuring out these things, showed us that Austin’s performance had cut the lead from 10 points to five,” Goodrich said. “Austin was a bit downtrodden, but we told him, ’You’re fine. We’d still be trailing even if you had won, and we’ll be state champions if we win the relay.’ Then he went out and swam the race of his life.”
The Cardinals were trailing by 1.34 seconds entering the fourth and final 100-meter length of the relay, but Carpenter, a junior who will be returning to next year’s team, made up the difference and won by 0.05 of a second to take first in the event and pick up 40 points, giving them 311. St. Xavier, with 34 points for their second-place finish in the relay, ended up with 310. The Aquabombers had won 15 of the previous 16 team titles and have a state-record 44 overall.
“I felt two emotions at the same time” after Carpenter’s dramatic victory on Saturday, Feb. 22 at the C.T. Branin Natatorium in Canton, Goodrich said. “It was sort of a whirlwind. I felt dumbfounded, yet at the same time, I felt such a sense of clarity, the feeling that things went exactly as I had thought they would.”
Also on the winning relay team were junior Alex Wu, senior Andrew Zarick and junior Brad King.
“The team did everything to perfection. They inspire me as a coach in the way I hope I’m inspiring them as swimmers,” Goodrich said. “All 15 team members who made it to state scored points. This was the ultimate example that every swimmer counts. If any one of the 15 had decided for whatever reason to skip the state meet, we’re not champions.”
He said senior Liam Miller, also a member of the Cardinals’ state championship water polo team, was an example of this all-in mentality. “He got hit in the head in a water polo match last month and didn’t know if he’d be able to represent us in Canton, but he showed up and scored points in the 200-yard individual medley,” Goodrich said. “If he decides to sit out, we don’t win. But he wanted to compete because he knew the team needed him. All his teammates are like that.”
Goodrich said one of the team’s most important contributors was junior Jonathan Malouf. “On his own initiative, he would print Bible verses and hang them in the locker room before each meet,” Goodrich said. “He and Andrew Zarick also led the team in prayers at the school grotto before meets – not praying to win but for individuals to do their best.
“As coaches, we had nothing to do with this but let them come to things on their own. The fact they took it upon themselves was really inspirational.”
The state championship was the Cardinals’ second. Goodrich, a St. Charles graduate, also was coach when they won the crown in 2008 after finishing second to St. Xavier in the two previous years. They were third last year.
Goodrich won a state individual event championship for St. Charles in 1994 and was a runner-up in 1993 and 1995, his senior year. “We finished, I think, seventh in ’94 and eighth in ’95 and those were our top two finishes before I began coaching,” he said.
He went on to swim for Indiana University, then returned to Columbus to attend law school at Capital University. He received a law degree from there in 2004 but gave up practicing law two years later to become a full-time coach with the Central Ohio Aquatics program, which most of the St. Charles swimmers represent in open meets.
He has coached at St. Charles since 2001, serving as head coach from 2002 to 2009 and from 2021 to the present.
Carpenter’s victory in the 100 free was St. Charles’ only other individual first-place finish at the meet. Junior Jake Lloyd was second and King fourth in the event, with the Cardinals also winning the 200 medley and 200 free relays.
Lloyd finished second in the 50 free, senior Wyatt Julian third in the 100 backstroke, Wu fourth in the 200 individual medley and Zarick fourth in the 100 butterfly.
Julian, Miller, Zarick and Luke Conway are the team’s four seniors. Goodrich anticipates that at least one of them and possibly more will be swimming in college next year.
Other team members are juniors Pierce Bateman, Ayden Fortney and Gabe Nixon, sophomores Dylan Rohyans and Will Liu and freshman Max Gao.