Athletes Of The Week: Kaitlyn Cresencia and Julia Kudryashova

Julia Kudryashova

Anyone who has been following the varsity swim team this season, and last season, knows Julia Kudryashova.

The senior star swimmer is featured as a for a second time this season, and rightfully so. Last month, Kudryashova won both the 50 and 100 freestyle at the Union County Relays, breaking both of her prior records with a time of 24.05 in the 50 and 51.55 in the 100.

But most recently at the Meet of Champions last weekend, Kudryashova improved even further and placed well among swimmers from around the state.

“We qualified for the 200 freestyle relay — Me, Kelly Carroll, Lyndsay Fagan and Megan Sullivan, and overall, we placed 8th. We did well,” Kudryashova said. “Overall, I’m really proud of the relay because we ended up taking a full second off our time, which is a lot. To place 8th, it was really fun because the girls got to stand on the podium, so I think everyone was really happy to be at that meet.”

Individually, Kudryashova placed second in the 50 free with a time of 23.81 and third in the 100 free with a time of 51.66 at the Meet of Champions.

“Individually, I couldn’t have asked for a better finish to my four years of swimming and I’m really pleased with how I did,” she said. “I did want to go at least a 51 mid by now and I achieved that in the 100. But in the 50, I’m still working on lowering that time. I actually have States this weekend for my club team [with the YMCA] and then Nationals [in April] so I’m hoping to see if I can lower my times there, too.”

Looking ahead, Kudryashova is still planning to attend University of Maryland, at College Park, on a Swimming Scholarship this fall.

“I’ll just be doing spring swimming, but less swimming and more running and toning my body,” she said. “Then I’ll continue through the summer and at University of Maryland [at College Park] next fall.”

Looking back, Kudryashova is pleased with her high school swimming career.

“It’s been great. High school swimming has always been fun,” she said. “It’s been a lot less stressful than club swimming, and you get to swim for your team and you focus less on times and more on the team aspect. That makes it so much more different and more fun than club swimming.”

Kaitlyn Cresencia

It’s no secret that the girls’ varsity basketball team is having a tremendous season.

And anyone who has been following the Lady Pioneers progress in the state tournament knows that senior forward Kaitlyn Cresencia has played a leading role in both past and present successes.

Most recently, Cresencia had a game high four steals . Later that week against Jonathan Dayton, she secured two big steals and scored the basket that Cresencia finished with 14 points, nine rebounds, five steals and four assists, not to mention a stellar 44-36 team victory.

“We went into each game strong, trying to set the tone early and then finally with Dayton, going into overtime was not what we were looking forward to, but it did give us a lot of experience,” Cresencia said.

After the , they then faced a familiar game against University in the Sectional Final, defending their title from last year against the same opponent.

Cresencia was the second leading scorer with 12 points and played a large role in the . Cresencia said head coach Cap Pazdera tried to keep the team as focused as possible through each tournament game.

“It’s really hard to not look ahead and say, ‘oh guys, think about playing University,’ because obviously something as big as that hangs over [our heads],” Cresencia said. “So our coach did a great job of keeping us focused. He said, ‘each game, we’re just going to go quarter by quarter and try to win each quarter. Don’t look to the next thing. Think about getting the job done,’ and that’s just kind of what we did.”

Cresencia said playing in the overtime period against Dayton prepared the team for the sectional final.

“It showed that we could come back from losing a lead and playing in tight situations like that, even in an extra period, which actually ended up helping us against University where we also saw an overtime period,” she said.

Continuing their success, the Lady Pioneers crushed North Jersey, Section 1, Group 1 champion Emerson Boro 41-23, behind stifling on-ball defense and fantastic ball movement.

"Right from the beginning, we saw that they had trouble guarding forwards so that was kind of our strategy throughout the game: find the mismatch and get the ball into the paint," Cresencia said.

Cresencia combined with sophomore to score 10 points in the first quarter alone and then drew contact on two straight possessions and went 3-for-4 from the foul line to help New Providence take a 24-7 lead into halftime. In the third quarter, Cresencia scored in the low post again off of an assist from Squeri to make it 26-10 New Providence with 6:45 left.

Monday's hero, then threw an inbounds pass to Cresencia for another low-post score early in the fourth, and Cresencia put an exclamation point on her performance with an offensive rebound and a put back to stretch the lead to 36-17.

"Walking in there, they had their whole crowd show up early and their entire student section was filled so everyone was kind of looking at that like 'alright, we’ll see what we’re in for,'" Cresencia said. "Then our coach came over and said, 'the crowd doesn’t play this game, you guys do.' So right off the bat, that kind of cleared it for us. We were sore from University, we are all tired so [we knew] our best chance of making it easier on ourselves was just to come out strong and get a little bit of a cushion."

The Lady Pioneers strategy has now propelled them to defend their Group 1 title on Sunday against Haddon Township at the Poland Springs Center in Toms River.

“I think today at practice and tomorrow, we’re going to find out more about Haddon Township because we actually haven’t heard much about them yet,” Cresencia told Patch Thursday morning. “Obviously our biggest thing is that University was the toughest team and was predicted to win. So our motivation then is we, as a team, did all this work against University and we don’t want to clear the way for someone else to take the title. We worked for it, we really want to get to that championship again.”

Cresencia said, looking back, she thinks the team handled the season really well.

“Losing seniors was tough and we knew it was going to be a harder job this season without them,” she said. “But I think everyone stepped up to the plate and recognized what our goals were early, and, this year, I personally was extremely pleased with how well everyone focused in on our goals and worked hard to get there.”

Looking back on her high school career, Cresencia said some of the larger towns and teams did not expect much from New Providence. But overall, Cresencia is satisfied with the team’s performance over the last four years.

“ and I both started as freshmen. When [we] stepped on the court freshman year, we didn’t really know what to expect because nobody really had any expectations for us. We want to prove to everyone that a young team could not have a rebuilding year but go right out there [and win a conference title],” Cresencia said.

Cresencia said that moving up to a different division made for a tougher schedule in the conference. Still, the Lady Pioneers have proven to be a strong force on the court.

“We have still proved to everyone that we can handle tougher competition and we weren’t just beating some of the smaller, weaker teams. And the sectionals have just been incredible,” Cresencia said. “I think the theme for our high school career the last four years was proving people wrong and proving ourselves to them because to beat University once, everyone thought it was a fluke. To do it again showed that we are a good team and can handle tougher games like that.”

Although the senior forward never really set any personal goals, she said her team goals have been far surpassed.

“Every year, going out there and looking for championships, I think all of us, especially Laura and I, can say that we’ve super seeded our goals,” Cresencia said. “, but everything happens for a reason and losing those games to Governor Livingston kind of got us in the fore seed and made us not have to face University until the sectional final, which was awesome.”

And looking ahead, Cresencia said she will continue practicing with the New Jersey Panthers, along side teammate Laura Gregory, and possibly coaching.

Cresencia will attend Connecticut College in New London, CT this fall to play Division 3 basketball.

Congratulations, Kaitlyn and Julia!

— Thomas Harrigan contributed to this report.

Note: While New Providence Patch usually features one male and one female each week as Athletes of the Week, two female athletes were chosen this week based on their tremendous accomplishments.