A wake of broken records behind him, recent Redwood grad named four-event All-American
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the July 20, 2016, edition of The Ark. It earned third place for Best Sports Feature Story in the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s 2017 Better Newspapers Contest.
By MATTHEW HOSE
mhose@thearknewspaper.com
By the time Belvedere resident Emilio De Somma arrived in Clovis to represent Redwood High School at the state swimming and diving championship, he had already left a trail of broken records in his wake.
But he had his sights set on one more. He wanted to break the 30-year-old county record for the 100-yard butterfly, his favorite race.
“I call that my baby event,” De Somma said. “I love that event more than any other event possible.”
He faced a choice: He could participate in two individual events — the 200-yard medley followed by the 100-yard fly — and try to place in both, taking the risk that he would burn out before the fly. Or he could sit out the medley and devote all of his energy to the fly in an attempt to beat the 48.49-second league record set by fellow Redwood alumnus Mark Fiorito in 1986.
De Somma took the second lane, and it paid off.
He broke the record by one-twentieth of a second, with a final time of 48.44 seconds.
“It meant a lot,” De Somma said. “After I saw the time, I knew I had made the right choice.”
It was the fourth Marin County Athletic League record he toppled in the month of May, as he individually and in team events also broke five Redwood High School records and capped off Redwood’s third year in a row as county champions.
Last week, on July 12, De Somma was named a four-time National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association All-American, his 100-yard butterfly time the 23rd fastest among all high school boys in the nation last year. He also won for 200-yard individual medley with the 27th fastest time and the 100-yard freestyle for the 45th fastest time among the nation’s high school boys, while his four-man relay team in the 400-yard freestyle also earned the 26th fastest time.
It was a historic run for De Somma, who will now head to the University of Pennsylvania in August to continue swimming competitively for their team.
In his record run, he also broke a 41-year MCAL meet-day record with his 200-yard individual medley — two lengths each of the fly, back, breast and crawl strokes — by 0.19 seconds, swimming it in 1 minute, 52.11 seconds. A week later he swam the same race even faster, in 1:49.19, to earn All-American for the event.
Additionally, he and a group of three Redwood underclassmen — Victor Sowa, Ivan Kurakin and Tiburon’s Leo Collins — also twice shattered the county record for the 400-yard free relay, swimming it in 3:04.74 at the state championship, almost 5½ seconds faster than the record that had held since 1981. That swim earned them the slot on the All-American list.
“That one I don’t think is going to be coming down for a while,” De Somma said.
“Say last year was the gold-medal year, this year was the record-setting year.”
Those records culminated with Redwood getting an 11th-place finish in the state tournament and placing fifth in the North Coast Section tournament in Concord.
It was De Somma’s third year on the Redwood swim team after transferring from University High School in San Francisco his freshman year. He served as a team captain for the past two years, both of which he was named an All-American.
De Somma started making a splash, and a name for himself, seven years ago when he first competed in the annual Tiburon Mile open-water swim from Angel Island to the beach at the Corinthian Yacht Club. At just 11 years old in 2009, his finishing time was only a second shy of capturing the perpetual Mayor’s Cup trophy for the fastest non-elite-class swimmer from Tiburon or Belvedere. But the next year, at age 12, he became the youngest swimmer in the race’s history to win the cup — and then he successfully defended his claim on it the next two years.
In picking a college, De Somma said he was looking for a school that had a good swimming program but did not sacrifice academic reputation, as he plans to major in economics with a minor in mechanical engineering.
Penn fit the bill, and he also liked it because the school is in the middle of a major metropolis, which reminded him of Hong Kong, where he lived until he was 10 years old.
“It was just perfect,” De Somma said.
Fred Ferroggiaro, the head coach of the Redwood men and women’s varsity swim teams, said De Somma’s strong individual drive will propel him far in his college career.
“Every time he jumps in the pool, he gives it everything he’s got,” Ferroggiaro said. “Whatever’s left in the tank, he gives it.”
But what seals the deal for Ferroggiaro is that De Somma does not let ego get in the way of being a team player.
Ferroggiaro pointed to the medley relay events at the MCAL championships and North Coast Sectional, in which De Somma chose to do one of his weaker strokes, the breaststroke, sacrificing competing with one of his better strokes because his breaststroke was still the best on the team.
“I like winning not only for myself, but for my high school,” De Somma said. “When the whole team gets to enjoy it together, it’s a lot better.”
Ivan Kurakin, the then-sophomore anchor on the record-setting free relay team who himself placed sixth in the state in the 500-yard individual freestyle, credited De Somma’s leadership as the team captain, and as the only senior on the team.
“He kept us cool,” Kurakin said. “We were nervous, but we knew what we could do.”
Overall, Ferroggiaro said he could see a fire in De Somma early on in his stint at Redwood.
“It just was pretty darn obvious to me that when he got to Redwood we were going to be hitching our wagon to him.”
He said that Penn is inheriting a young swimmer who knows how to rise to the challenge in front of him.
“He performs well when challenged,” Ferroggiaro said. “If there’s any doubt about whether this freshman is going to choke — have no fear about that.”
Reporter Matthew Hose covers the city of Belvedere, as well as crime, courts and public safety issues on the Tiburon Peninsula. Reach him at 415–944–4627 and on Twitter at @matt_hose.
