FORTVILLE — Aiden Tierney said his friends joke with him.
“How does it feel to be the GOAT of Mt. Vernon swimming?” they ask.
Tierney will definitely be considered an all-time great at Mt. Vernon High School. He’s coming off a school-best, second-place finish in the IHSAA boys swimming state finals in the 100-yard breaststroke, as well as an eighth-place in the 100-yard butterfly along with being a part of the school’s 200-yard medley relay team, which finished 13th.
He is the 2020-21 Daily Reporter Boys Swimmer of the Year.
He humbly brushes off that often-used acronym for “Greatest of All Time.”
“I don’t like to think of it like that, but it’s really cool to kind of leave a mark in the sport at Mt. Vernon, especially with what I achieved at state being a runner-up, it was a big deal to me and our team,” Tierney said.
The Marauders finished 16th in the state meet with 36 points, all coming in Tierney’s individual races and the relay.
“I would like to think that it shows our underclassmen it’s possible,” Tierney added on his achievements during his senior season and career as a Marauder. “Mt. Vernon is not a big school like Fishers or Carmel or any of those other schools that have 4,000 students. A lot of people doubt those small schools and think you can’t swim fast and you have to go to one of those big schools.
“I’d like to think this shows them that’s not true. You can swim fast wherever you are.”
It hasn’t come easy and it didn’t come without major adjustments for his senior year.
With the pandemic hitting shortly after the end of the 2019-20 high school swimming season, Tierney, who had been to two state meets previously, had to go about things differently when it came to training for his final campaign.
Unable to get in the pool due to pandemic restrictions, he had to go a different route to prepare. Bicycling, lifting weights and running were the norm last summer.
He believes that method was key to his success.
“Senior seasons are already stressful because it’s your last year to go for some goals,” Tierney said. “COVID kind of made everyone a little down, because we didn’t think we were going to be able to swim. It was hard to work out over the summer because it felt like you were working out for nothing.
“Once we found out we were going to have a high school season we were all locked in and started to train super hard for that last year. It was definitely super hard with COVID though, trying to push through mentally.”
Tierney said, from June to August, he was biking up to 100 miles and running 20 miles per week, along with doing weightlifting.
He wasn’t able to work on the technical things in the pool, but when that time came, he wanted to be in the best physical shape possible.
“I have biked in the past, but I kind of did it more as a therapy-type deal, I wasn’t biking to train,” Tierney said. “I would go 10 miles when I’d go out and bike. This year I was focusing on trying to get better because I wasn’t able to swim. My brother (Dixon) and I would go out and do 60-mile bike rides just trying to work further and further like I do in swimming.”
Tierney believes his off-season, cross-training workouts were monumental in helping him accomplish senior-season goals.
“Absolutely 100 percent it (helped),” he said. “If I did not do that I would not have swam even close to what I did at the state meet.”
In his runner-up finish in the 100 breaststroke, Tierney finished with a school-record time of 54.11 seconds, over two seconds quicker than his prelim time of 56.77. He was seeded fifth.
He finished nearly a full-second ahead of third-place Cameron Luarde of Homestead, who finished in 55.08 seconds. Carmel’s Ryan Malicki won with a time of 53.71.
In the 100 butterfly, Tierney swam a Marauder-record 48.87 in the preliminaries to earn a spot in the A final, where he placed eighth. Again, he was nearly two seconds better (50.42) than his seeded time. He finished in 50.73 in the finals.
The relay team swam a school-record time of 1:35.62. Tierney was the second leg of the group that included senior leadoff Aidan Murphy, sophomore Brady Gray and senior anchor Evan Flick.
Mt. Vernon swim coach Brad Grieshop said Tierney’s off-season efforts to get ready for this season showed more than his top guy is a great swimmer.
“It says a lot about his character and his drive to achieve those goals he had set out as a young kid to be the best he could be, the best swimmer he could be,” Grieshop said.
The team followed Tierney’s lead. It was not just a great year for him, it was a great year for the team, which won a sectional title for the first time since 2005, to go with a Hoosier Heritage Conference championship.
“He’s been a great leader this year and he’s pushed his teammates in and out of the water to do more and to be better to achieve their potential,” Grieshop said. “Also, I think you go back to (his brother) Dixon and (sister) Lydia, they both had top 16 swims at state, were sectional and school-record holders now all of sudden Aiden is runner-up at state.
“It proves it can be done here. I really think he’s continued to build upon what Dixon and Lydia had done themselves. Now, he’s set an even higher bar that you can go further than just go to state. You can get those top 16s, top 8s and if you really want it, those top tier spots are yours for the taking as well.”
Tierney was happy with how he was able to wrap up his final year, but truly reveled in what he and his teammates were able to accomplish.
“For me, the sectional championship with the team was really, really cool,” Tierney said. “That was just our second one in history. (Dixon) was close to getting one of those and to me it’s kind of the Holy Grail of swimming. To get that was a (great) experience and to be able to share my success with my teammates was awesome.”
“The state runner-up was obviously a really cool achievement but the conference and sectional championships were far sweeter.”
