East Lyme — Rob Bouchey, in his first season as the head coach of the East Lyme High School boys' swim team, plans to keep the job a long time. Forever, he said.

And not just because the Vikings are undefeated.

Here's another example of what makes the job so intriguing:

On Friday afternoon, a day which East Lyme clinched the Eastern Connecticut Conference regular-season championship as well as celebrating its Senior Day, Bouchey, for the first and only time this season, let the kids on the team pick their own events.

A chance for glory, right?

Except that Jack Wheeler, a senior, chose to swim the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events, which happen to be the best events of East Lyme freshman Jack Mucciarone, who won both handily. To summarize, Wheeler chose to finish second in a pair of events to a freshman ... on Senior Day.

"The 200 IM, the 100 fly, the 100 breaststroke are more my specialty events," said Wheeler, who has signed to swim next year at Division II Adelphi University on Long Island. "I just want to become a better all-around swimmer. I want to get the times so when I go to college, I can try to get points there, as well as here.

"Not at all," Wheeler said, asked if he minded taking a back seat to Mucciarone. "Those are his events. It doesn't matter if I got second or first, I'm proud of Jack. He's going to have a great high school career."

It's been that kind of seamless season for the Vikings. They defeated Norwich Free Academy 95-70 and New London 98-54 Friday to push their record to 11-0 overall, 10-0 in the ECC. NFA defeated New London 121-42.

Bouchey, already the head coach of the Nutmeg Swim Team and the Old Lyme High girls' team, took over this fall as assistant aquatics director at the East Lyme pool and head coach of the high school boys' program. He originally hails from Utica, Mich., but moved to Windham with his wife Stephanie in 2015.

He already earned the respect of plenty of the East Lyme athletes who knew him prior to his stint as the high school coach. Now he has even more of the Vikings' attention.

"It was very apparent from the first week he came in," Wheeler said of Bouchey's command of the pool. "No one was talking when he was trying to give us a set. ... Our practices for high school are very rigorous."

"They're still learning how to work," Bouchey said. "As a group, we've had to put a few things in place, make sure they know they're swimming for a championship time ... make sure they know they're competing against each other as well as other teams."

The Vikings started the season with a 97-89 victory over nonleague rival Middletown, helping to build the momentum headed into the ECC portion of the schedule. East Lyme lost to Middletown 100-85 last year.

On Friday, Mucciarone won the 50 free (24.27) and 100 free (53.61), sophomore Jack Zhang the 200 free (2:01.65) and 100 butterfly (59.89) and junior Eain Goolsbey the 200 IM (2:14.90) and 500 free (5:26.10). Ben Prouty finished first in diving (192.80) and Daniel Rubio-Ejchel, Wheeler, Zhang and Mucciarone teamed to win the 200 medley relay in 1:53.46.

The Vikings swam the final four races as exhibition events, meaning their points did not count.

Michael McCormack of NFA won the 100 backstroke and New London's Tim Glavan the 100 breaststroke.

"I'm having a blast," Bouchey said. "It is a lot of fun. All our talented kids are really grounded. They've really come together as a team. The most impressive thing was I let them choose their events and three or four of them said they'd swim whatever the team needs.

"They're working really hard. They haven't stopped yet and they won't stop."

v.fulkerson@theday.com