brian lewis/the gazette
B-CC senior Donzen Urubshurow is plowing through the waters of Montgomery County pools again this season after a two-year hiatus to focus on baseball.
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Bethesda-Chevy Chase senior Donzen Urubshurow is no stranger to the chlorinated waters of a swimming pool. But in a preseason scrimmage against Blair in November, he barely made it through one of his best events, the 200-yard individual medley.
It's not a surprising result for someone making his first foray into the pool after a three-year hiatus.
Urubshurow burst onto the county swimming scene as a freshman in 2005-06, with three top-10 finishes at the county championships and a top-15 at the prestigious Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships. He was pegged by coaches and peers as a swimmer to watch over the next three years of his high school career.
But the former Rockville-Montgomery Swim Club member had other ideas: He wanted to pursue a college baseball career. So, after the 2006 Metros, he quit swimming and set out to achieve that goal.
The Barons swimming team took a brief hiatus of its own that coincided with Urubshurow's. B-CC dropped from Montgomery Division I to Division II after the end of the 2006 season. But the school resurfaced among the county's elite this winter.
If first-year coach Jason Blanken's squad was going to be competitive in the county's top division, he was going to need more depth. Blanken went recruiting in his own halls.
Not only did he bring Urubshurow back into the fold, but also the former B-CC star's good friend Matt Davey-Karlson. Davey-Karlson also swam his freshman year, but spent the past two on the indoor track and field team.
"I knew Donzen's name and saw results from when he was younger and knew he was a good swimmer," Blanken said. "So I sent a couple of the kids I knew from club swimming out to try and see if he'd be interested in swimming again and convince him I was a nice enough guy. By the time the first team meeting rolled around, Donzen and Matt Davey-Karlsen were the first two guys I met standing right in the front of the room."
In the end, it actually did not take too much convincing. Urubshurow and Davey-Karlsen had always planned to get back to swimming senior year. They just wanted to take a break from swimming after training eight to 10 times a week with RMSC from the age of 8.
The two have added much-needed depth to the Barons boys, who are off to a respectable 2-1 start. Urubshurow (100 fly) and Davey-Karlson (100 breaststroke) have already qualified for Metros.
"Having someone like Donzen, who can swim almost every event and I can plug him in wherever we have holes, is definitely something that's nice to have," Blanken said. "Our weakest area is breaststroke, hands down. With Matt in there we know we're not going to get crushed. He can prevent sweeps; prevents some damage."
Swimming is like riding a bike: You don't forget. On the other hand, the sport requires a different type of endurance than running and lifting, which both athletes have spent the past three years doing to stay in shape.
So while the strokes are there for Urubshurow and Davey-Karlsen, it has been a struggle to get back to the level of swimming endurance they once had. But they're getting there.
Urubshurow has already dropped 6 seconds off his 100 fly, and his 56-second best time is faster than he swam the event as a freshman.
"I forgot how much swimming was a part of my life," Urubshurow said. "It's good to get back to what I used to be doing. I definitely have more appreciation for it. I'm more motivitated. I want to put as much work as I can into getting faster because I know I've wasted a lot of time not being in the water."
