Yogi Berra is famous for telling reporters that baseball is 90-percent mental and the other half is physical. If Berra knows anything about swimming, he might make the same statement, which is something that coach Tim O'Connor constantly works on with his swimmers.

When O'Connor looks at Casey Young, he sees a lot of his younger self in her not just mentally, but as far as their build. Like Young, O'Connor was a muscular young swimmer in his high school days and had to find a way to handle the sport mentally.

"Casey Young is a very hard worker for us," said O'Connor. "I was a swimmer myself, who swam my best times in the first meet of the year and then it was work the rest of the year. Casey's muscular and I think she's somebody that when she rests, she needs to rest. As much as she trains really hard, she needs to rest really hard to be successful.

"Her biggest thing is that she needs to be mentally strong to realize this is just part of her game right now. Yes, every week, every meet is going to be tough; you're going to feel tired and tight and sore, but if you can mentally push yourself through that and expect excellence out of yourself mentally, then physically, at the end of the year she is going to be very successful."

O'Connor isn't only impressed with Young's work ethic, but the fact that she is understanding the mental part of the sport that is tough to teach to young swimmers. Young has taken the approach to just try to keep things as simple as possible as she works her way through her junior season.

"Always working on technique, that's something for everyone to do and just getting back to the basics, generally is a big part of swimming," said Young. "It is difficult. Sometimes, it is hard to get back from a bad race and gather yourself, but we have a great team and everyone is really supportive of each other. I couldn't ask for better teammates."

While the Emmaus girls (7-1) suffered their first loss of the season this past weekend at Wilson-West Lawn, Young continues to turn in impressive performances. Young captured third in the 200 freestyle and second in the 100 freestyle in individual events and was also part of the 200 freestyle relay team that finished second and the 400 freestyle relay team that finished first.

"I've always really wanted to do my best for myself and for my team. I've been swimming for a while and I've just always wanted to go as hard as I can," explained Young.

O'Connor has high beliefs in Young and is excited to see her working through being tough mentally and understanding just what she needs to do to both physically and mentally to be successful.

"That's my only thing with Casey right now that we're working on and she's open and she gets it," said O'Connor. "You don't want kids to hurt themselves mentally. Physically hurt, you can see that, but mentally hurt, that's a difficult thing to get kids through. She's pushing, which is great."

While the girls lost to Wilson-West Lawn, 100-86, the boys kept their record perfect at 8-0 with a 94-92 win over the Bulldogs. The team of Carter Paules, John Woltornist, Connor DeJohn and Ethan Carr picked up a win in the 400 freestyle relay, the final event of the meet, to preserve the victory.