DECEMBER 18, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY MATTHEW BIRCHENOUGH
ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
For the first time in years, when the Ridgewood High School swim teams host a meet, they will actually being doing so at home.
The Maroons’ practices and home meets are now being held around the corner from RHS at the Ridgewood YMCA after years of traveling to Passaic County Tech in Wayne.
“They’re very happy about it and I’m sure the parents are too,” said first-year coach Kimberly Schmidt. “The one thing that they do miss are the long bus rides. Not the late-night practices but the long bus rides, because they got to know each other and have fun.”
Schmidt, in her first year as a health teacher at the high school, took the helm after former coach Keith Cook was hired as the school’s athletic director earlier this year.
The coach taught in Newark for eight years and coached swimming at Gill St. Bernard’s, a private school in the city that had just begun its swimming program. Schmidt, originally from Suffern, N.Y., previously had served as an assistant on the Montclair State University coaching staff and swam for the University of Rhode Island.
Instead of a pool, Fast Eddie prevailed and we were saddled with turfed fields at the high school….and lights of course.