A wild and wacky D1 state meet

Was there a full moon hiding behind all the snow that fell on Madison Saturday? That may be the only thing to explain the odd, strange and unpredictable events that took place at the Div. 1 state meet.

Maybe the only normal thing about the day's meet was that the pre-meet favorite, Madison Memorial, ended up winning its 10th title with 200.5 points. It was the lowest winning score at a D1 meet since the the first year that the WIAA began 16-place scoring in 1982.

How strange was the meet? Let us count the ways:

-- There was a tie for 1st in the 50 free -- the first tie for a gold medal at the state meet since 1964. Wausau East's Lucas Koenig and Sauk Prairie/Wisconsin Heights' Matt Friede were the two atop the podium.

-- Two winners came out of the second heat, and well back in the second heat (Wausau East's Lucas Koenig, T-1st in the 50 free, was seeded 12th, and Sauk's mind-boggling 400 free relay was seeded 13th.)

-- A total of six swimmers and two relays came out of the second heat to make the top six and stand on the medal-winner's podium.

-- The winner of the 100 free, Wausau East's Danny Brebrick, came out of lane 1 to win, and did so pretty easily, winning by nearly three-tenths of a second.

-- Lane 4 of the final heat -- the very top seed in the meet -- seemed to be cursed, as no one won out of the top-seeded lane until more than halfway through the meet.

-- A DQ once again played a major role in the final standings of the top teams.

All in all, the crazy results reflected the talent pool in D1 this year -- pretty deep, and spread out all over the state. It was also a meet that featured perhaps the most anticipated race in years in D1, and that race somehow managed to exceed those expectations.

Memorial's win was about as un-flashy of a victory as it gets. Only junior sensation Michael Drives won a race for the Spartans. The team didn't win any relays, but got top-four finishes out of all three relays (the only team to do so) to pile up points. A succession of Spartan swimmers -- Patrick Franken in the 200 IM and 500 free, Kyle Challis in the 100 fly and 100 back, and Ben Anderson and Jake Schneider, both in the 50 free -- quietly improved their seed times throughout the meet to add more points in what was a close contest throughout. Finally, diver Nate Broadbridge gave the team a big boost to start when he improved his seed by four places to finish runner-up in the diving competition.

It was sweet redemption for the vaunted program, which lost the title last year by one point to Hartland-Arrowhead when a DQ in the final heat of the 400 free relay moved Arrowhead past the Spartans. "(To know) what these seniors went through last year losing by a point ... they were determined to come out and win this year," Memorial coach Paul Eckerle told the Wisconsin State Journal. "Right from the get-go, you could see that they wanted it and to see them come away with it at the end, I'm just really proud of them."

In short, the Spartans swam slightly better than expected, unlike Sauk Prairie/Wisconsin Heights and Wausau East, which rightly could be characterized as swimming out of their collective minds. The two teams improved on their seed placements by nearly 100 points -- runner-up Sauk (182.5 points vs. a seeded 133) and Wausau East (175.5 points vs. a seeded 129).

For Sauk, coach Todd Wuerger's gamble to try to qualify three relays for state paid off. The team scrambled their relays at sectionals to try to get all three to qualify, and it worked. Wuerger than rearranged the teams for state, essentially conceding the medley relay (which finished 22nd), while putting his top four swimmers -- senior Tyler Evans, juniors Matt Friede and Tyler Lentz, and sophomore Paul Ballweg -- on the two free relays. It worked in ways even Wuerger probably couldn't imagine. First, the 200 free relay defended its championship and set a state record (1:24.32) in a very fast race that saw two other relays -- Marquette and Memorial -- better the old record of 1:25.73. The Sauk relay was anchored by Friede, whose blistering 20.02 leg bested the field by nearly half-a-second. Then the same foursome, swimming out of lane 2 in the second of third heats of the 400 free relay, swam virtually alone the entire race and clocked in at 3:07.63, more than four seconds faster than any of the seeded times of relays in the final heat, and just off the state record of 3:07.48.

Could anyone top it? Wausau East made a gallant effort, led by Koenig, who swam great all day and got the team off to a lead with a 46.22 opening leg that it never relinquished. When anchor Danny Brebrick touched out, WEast just missed first place by .13 seconds, and Sauk had its second relay win of the day in unusual fashion. The outcome decided who got the second-place trophy, as the 12-point swing between the two teams gave Sauk the runner-up trophy that Wuerger conceded was unexpected. "For a small town like us to finish second in the meet, that's just unbelievable," he told the State Journal. "I would have never imagined that would have happened." Sauk's second-place finish was augmented by a host of top finishes -- Friede took 2nd in the 100 free to go along with his T-1st in the 50 free, Evans took 3rd in the 50 free and 4th in the 100 fly, and Lentz captured the 200 IM title and came back for a 3rd in the 100 back.

Coming up just short in the race for 2nd, however, didn't deter from what was an outstanding meet for Wausau East, which easily defended its 200 medley relay title, and saw three of the swimmers on that relay -- Keonig in the 50 free, Brebrick in the 100 free, and Josh Hall in the 100 breastroke -- win gold medals. All looked sharp, but Hall may have had the sweetest meet. He started off by obliterating the field of breaststrokers in the medley relay (his split of 25.32 seconds was nearly two seconds better than anyone else in the field, and essentially won the relay for East), moved up three spots to finish 4th in the 200 IM, and then beat rival Collin Neitzel of Waukesha South/Catholic Memorial in the 100 breaststroke. Hall, runner-up to Neitzel last year, nearly broke the state record (56.17; record 55.87 by Memorial's Chris Wood), and did so with water apparently clogging up his goggles for much of the race.

Other highlights from the meet:

-- Drives' performance in the 200 free was singularly impressive, as he set a state record of 1:38.02 (set two years ago by current UW swimmer Wes Lagerhausen) and easily won his much-anticipated duel with Arrowhead's Ryan Hansen. Drives let Hansen take the early lead, reeled him back in during the second 50 yards, and then exploded to the finish, drawing away to a win by nearly three seconds over his rival. Drives' time bettered the UW pool record, of all things, held by Olympian Peter Vanderkaay set while swimming for the University of Michigan. Drives swam his "internal" 100 -- the second and third 50s -- in 49.37, when he pulled away for the win. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

-- Drives and Hansen then hooked up again in the 500 free, in the meet's most anticipated race. Hansen, seeking redemption after the 200 free and trying to defend his state championship in the event from last year, got off to his usual fast start, clocking a 49.08 opening 100. Drives bided his time, and when he moved ahead of Hansen midway through the race, it looked to be a repeat of the 200 free. But Hansen gamely hung on, then dug in for the last 100 yards as the swimmers went stride-for-stride, 20 yards ahead of the field, with the crowd standing and roaring. Hansen pulled away in the end, winning with a record time of 4:28.98 to 4:29.98 over Drives. The two swimmers embraced after the finish -- a mutual-admiration society for two oustanding competitors.

-- New Berlin's Byron Butler won both the 100 fly and the 100 back, beating rival Jack Lennertz in the fly by almost half-a-second and easily winning the 100 back by nearly 1.5 seconds over Middleton's Sam Niesen.

-- As for that DQ, it once again played a role in who brought home hardware from the meet. Entering the final event, the 400 free relay, Memorial stood atop the standings with 170.5 and the 3rd-seeded relay; a DQ on the Spartans was really all that stood between them and a state title. Marquette was second with 152 points and the top-seed in the relay; bringing home the 2nd-place team trophy was a real possibility for the team. Sauk at 142.5 and Wausau East with 141.5 points, along with Arrowhead at 132 points, occupied the next three slots. For Marquette, any finish in the top three guaranteed second place in the team standings, but when Sauk clocked in its near-record time in the second heat, it put a lot of pressure on all of the final-heat relays. For Marquette, the meet ended with disappointment, as the top-seeded relay DQ'd, relegating the senior-heavy team to 5th place in the team standings. Memorial's 4th-place finish in the relay clinched the team title. Somehow it was an oddly appropriate ending to
a night filled with the unexpected and unusual.