Trojans sophomore Vlad Lutterman clears his head and delivers the two best swims of his life at the DAC meet

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Chesterton sophomore Vlad Lutterman swam faster in Saturday’s DAC meet at Lake Central than he ever had in his life, and did a nice job of zeroing in on why that was the case.
“Part of me thinks it was the suit, but I think it was a sum of all the parts,” Lutterman said. “All the training this season.”
And then he offered his most interesting explanation when discussing how he was in the perfect head space during his races.
“It felt like nobody else was there when I jumped into the water,” he said. “Just me and the water. Nobody else.”
He quieted his brain and didn’t let factors that sometimes get in the way enter.
“Sometimes people get in your head. You take what they say wrong. It makes you mess up. It makes you do things differently,” he said. “You have to not do that. Here, that was different.”
He was his own mental bouncer, not letting anyone or anything enter.
“I didn’t think about anyone else,” he said. “Not even the other swimmers in the pool. I looked down. I went fast.”
Is there a better four words to boil swimming down to its essence than those: look down, go fast?
“That’s it,” Lutterman said. “That’s all there is to it. You look down, you go fast.”
And then when the race was over and he looked up to see his times, the best he had ever seen with his name next to them.
The 200 individual medley, the meet’s third event, was Lutterman’s first raced and he pared 4.38 seconds from his entry time and finished fifth with a 2:01.50, one place and 1.59 seconds behind junior teammate Liam Eschbach.
Lutterman didn’t get back into the pool until the 11th event, the 100-yard breaststroke and he delivered another lifetime best, a 1:01.43, good for fourth place in an event in which freshman teammate Aadin Guzzo placed sixth with a 1:02.16. Vlad also beat his brother, senior Wolfe, who placed ninth with a 1:03.89.
Vlad was quick to point out the extenuating circumstance that played a part in finishing ahead of his brother for the first time.
“He’s not doing the best,” Vald said. “He’s a little sick.”
The sectional finals, which determine what swimmers advance to the state meet, aren’t until Feb. 21, again at Lake Central, so Wolfe has plenty of time to get back to full strength and the entire team stands to get in even better shape.
“I think we can all do better at sectionals than we did here,” Vlad said.