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Lake Forest High School’s Alessandro Raganelli reacts after completing a swim earlier this season. Prior to every home meet, the Italian-born teen sings the national anthem. Photography by Joel Lerner
More than 11 years ago, the native of Italy entered Lake Forest Country Day School for the first time. Alessandro “Ale” Raganelli was six years old, a boy who knew just a few more words in the English language than most newborns in the United States know.
The first-grader from Rome uttered two words quite often back then. “Little” was one. “Bit” was the other.
“People would ask me all the time, ‘Do you speak English?’ ” recalls Raganelli, now a junior swimmer at Lake Forest High School. “I’d tell them, ‘Little bit.’ ”
Little Ale, shy but not painfully shy, introduced Italian words to some of his brand-new LFCDS classmates. Diminutive U.S. citizens learned how to say, “Io ti amo” (“I love you”), from one of their brand-new peers. Bonus knowledge. An adult at the school later reminded Raganelli that he was in school to expand his English vocabulary, not to serve as an adjunct foreign language teacher.
Raganelli advanced to the second grade at LFCDS, to the third grade, to the fourth grade … all the way to the eighth grade. In 2012, at the school’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony, two students were chosen to speak. Raganelli, engaging and respectful, was one of them. He knew more than a little bit of English that day. Much more.
Raganelli’s love for swimming helped him make a fairly smooth transition to Lake Forest High School, roughly five times the size of LFCDS. He was three years old, maybe four, when he won his first swimming medal in his homeland. The event was the 50-meter kick.
“I was four months old, I’ve been told, when I had my first experience in a pool,” the 5-foot-11, 155-pound Raganelli says. “My mom [Maria] liked the sport. She liked that it worked the entire body. She knew swimmers weren’t prone to injury. I love swimming. When I swim, it feels like I’m flying, like I’m above the water. It’s the greatest feeling, that sensation of flying.”
Before Raganelli’s sophomore season, Scouts varsity swimming coach Cindy Dell needed a student to sing the national anthem at home meets. She heard Raganelli had performed as a soloist for the school’s chorus. Dell asked Raganelli to warble on deck. The request to sing about ramparts and the rockets’ red glare stunned Raganelli. It also thrilled him.
“It has been an incredible honor to sing before our home meets,” Raganelli says.
Scouts senior swimmer Nico Demet has vivid memories of Raganelli’s singing debut in a natatorium. His teammate was nervous that day, first-day-in-a-new-country nervous.
“He was shaking before he started,” Demet recalls. “But he settled down, stood there and sang it. Sang great. He killed it.”
Raganelli belted his rendition of the national anthem for a final time this winter at the North Suburban Conference varsity meet on Feb. 14, a week after swimming on the victorious 200-yard freestyle relay at the NSC JV meet. Raganelli’s voice sounded professional and inspirational and sturdy. As the crowd applauded loudly following his final note, Raganelli turned and found a proud, smiling Dell standing in front of him, waiting with open arms. The coach and student/athlete/singer embraced.
“An amazing young man,” Dell says.
Raganelli does something every winter break that nobody else on his team does. He visits several relatives in Italy for two weeks, beginning in late December. For high school swimmers, winter break is a critical time to stick around and complete grueling, lactic-acid-heavy sets that would wow folks from all walks (and kicks) of life, Navy SEALs included. High school swimmers who miss team workouts during winter break risk losing their water time in the lineup when they return. But family means the world to the worldly Raganelli.
“The most important thing in my life is my family,” Raganelli says. “My family will always be there for me. It would be too hard for me, passing up the opportunity to spend time with my family in Italy.”
His parents, Maria and Marco, accompany their son to Italy each winter. Their son does not need to be reminded to pack his swimsuit and goggles and swim cap. Their son insists on training for two hours a day — typically for eight of the 14 days he’s in Italy — at an indoor pool, located some 50 miles from where the Raganellis stay. Swimming and family. Family and swimming … love/amo No. 1 and love/amo No. 2. He has to do what he can to keep up with his teammates stateside. He owes it to them, to his coaches. In Italy, swimmers of all ages swim and train near Ale, their friend from the U.S., their yearly visitor. They are interested in the way he trains. They are fascinated. They call him “l’Americano.”
Raganelli gets in a lane, puts his head down, strokes and kicks and turns.
“They get to see the American philosophy of training,” says Raganelli, also a Scout Aquatics member. “We exchange tips. We compare breaststroke techniques. I tell them what I think when I train. They tell me what they think when they train.”
Raganelli purchased more than a dozen USA swimming caps before winter break in December, some black, some white. An American flag adorned each. He packed them in his suitcase. They were gifts. Gifts for his training mates in Italy.
Among his dreams is to spearhead a swimmer exchange program, with Scouts hitting water in Italy and Italians hitting water in Lake Forest. It is quite an endeavor, laden with details. He is working on it. He is hopeful.
Raganelli’s 2014-15 swimming season ended at the NSC JV meet. Varsity swimmers, though, considered him an instrumental teammate when he sang the national anthem one week later, a stirring tone setter, a chill-inducing artist. He took three Advanced Placement tests — AP French, AP U.S. history, AP biology — on Feb. 11. The son of parents with PhDs in mechanical engineering is thinking of majoring in mechanical engineering after graduating from LFHS in 2016. Alessandro Raganelli is thriving, striving.
His two go-to English words, more than a decade after moving to Lake Forest, are now “thank” and “you,” uttered consecutively and often and sincerely.
“Props to my teachers at Lake Forest County Day School, all of them,” says Raganelli, fluent in Italian, English and French. “Props to my tutor at the school. I’m one lucky guy, one really lucky guy, to have been taught by passionate teachers. Getting the chance to speak [at his eighth-grade graduation], that was such an honor, an opportunity for me to say thank you to so many people that day. I thanked them for helping me grow as an individual in this country, for helping me become multifaceted.
“I have to be honest … I wasn’t too happy when we first got here. Looking back, though, moving here has been the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Notable: Lake Forest High School’s varsity swimming and diving squad won eight of the 12 events at the NSC Meet in the home water last weekend but settled for runner-up honors (317) to Stevenson (337). Scouts senior Daniel Smith and sophomore Dylan Boyd each went 4-for-4, winning a pair of individual events and swimming on two victorious relays. They joined seniors Symen Ooms and Michael LeMay on the 200 medley (1:39.17) and 400 freestyle (3:12.65) units. Smith touched first in the 100 free (48.87) and 100 backstroke (53.89); Boyd topped the 500 free (4:41.5) and 200 IM (1:59.12) fields. Ooms zipped to a first-place 21.72 in the 50 free, and LFHS junior Alexander Streightiff captured the diving segment with a 508-point effort, ahead of classmate John-Michael Diveris (second place, 472.55). … LeMay sped to runner-up points in the 200 IM (2:00.96) and 100 butterfly (53.67) events, and Ooms motored to third in the 100 breaststroke (1:02.2). … LF’s other medalists (top-six performers): Scott Bennatan (fifth, 200 free, 1:52.11; fifth, 500 free, 5:02.7); Wyatt Foss (sixth, 200 free 1:52.28); Michael Hambleton (sixth, 500 free, 5:04.85); Spencer Moore (sixth, 100 back, 57.79); and Hambleton, Bennatan, Foss and Kevin Donahue (200 free relay, sixth, 1:34.95). … Demet was recognized as the Scouts’ NSC Sportsmanship Award recipient at the NSC Meet. … The Scouts vie for state berths at the Vernon Hills Sectional on Feb. 21
LAKE FOREST: Senior Corey Knudsen was one of six Scouts to place in the North Suburban Conference championships at Warren High School on Jan. 31.
A stunned John Bang exited a wrestling mat for the final time of his prep career last weekend. The Lake Forest High School senior had just been pinned by Mundelein High School senior Ricky Lopez in the match for third place at 285 pounds at the Class 3A Stevenson Regional.
The much-anticipated boys basketball rematch between Stevenson and Lake Forest didn’t have a lot of drama.
