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Saturday's Cardinal Relays at Middleton saw a match-up between the two defending state champs in boys swimming -- the Div. 1 Spartans of Madison Memorial and Div. 2 Spartans of McFarland. Memorial came out on top 166-140 in a meet that saw a number of good races (Madison West was 3rd with 115, followed by Middleton at 98 and Sauk Prairie-Wisconsin Heights with 78).
Memorial won three of the 11 swimming events, and sophomore Patrick Franken had a hand in all three wins. Franken, who emerged late last season as one of the top freshman in the state, anchored the winning 800-free relay with a scintillating 200 free split of 1:43.84 (7:25.24 overall). He also anchored Memorial's winning 200 free relay (1:29.32), his 22.04 anchor leg enough to keep the lead given to him by his teammates and hold off an on-rushing Matt Friede of Sauk (20.81 anchor leg). Franken also opened the 400 free relay for Memorial (49.55), which topped Sauk -- the defending state champs in the event -- by 3+-seconds with a time of 3:16.14, the fastest in the state this year for D1 teams.
McFarland picked up two wins -- the 400 IM medley (two 100 IMs sandwiched around one 200 IM), and the 300 breaststroke relay (alternating between 50 and 100 breaststrokes). In the former, sophomore Ryan O'Donnell ripped off a 1:55.75 200 IM leg to give the relay the lead and an eventual 2+-second win over Greenfield/Greendale's powerful trio of Mike Lucchesi, Matt Jungers, and Jack Lennertz. In the latter, sophomore Jacob Mandli sealed a win over a very good quartet of Madison West breaststrokers with a 1:01.31 anchor leg. McFarland racked up five other top-3 finishes in the relay meet, demonstrating the kind of depth that makes them tough competition for their D2 peers next month.
G/G got some revenge on McFarland in the 300 fly relay, with Lennertz -- probably the favorite for the D1 fly crown at state next month -- anchoring (51.23) a narrow, .26 seconds win over McFarland and O'Donnell (50.80).
Additional coverage by the Wisconsin State Journal here:
http://host.madison.com/sports/high-school/swimming/article_44e003c2-0309-11df-9a07-001cc4c03286.html?mode=story
Full results here...
Middleton Relays Results 011610 (1)
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2 comments:
Frankin is good, but the real key is Anderson. He put out some good split times on Saturday. Right now the relays are shaping up to be quite exciting at state time. Do you see Sauk in the Medley this year?
I think the medley, because Hanko can provide a solid lead-off backstroke leg, Ballweg has a solid fly leg -- 23.66 last year at state -- and Lentz would certainly have one of the fastest breaststroke legs among D1 medleys. That's part of the reason I see Sauk going with the medley -- I don't see in D1 this year a real lights-out 50 breaststroker that can make the difference with one leg, the way Josh Hall did with WEast. But Lentz would be the one. If Sauk's anywhere close to the lead after the first three legs, it's hard to bet against Friede, who is a great, great relay swimmer.
The real guess is between the 200 and 400 free relays for Sauk -- I've been thinking they'd go 400, because my sense is that Hanko and Ballweg (the two "inside" legs presumably) are a little bit better in the 100 than 50, and the longer Lentz and Friede are in the water, the better, it seems. But Sauk's won the 200 FRelay two years in a row, which might be tough to give up. I don't think Sauk has the depth this year to do what they did last year, which was to split up their best guys and get three relays through to state, and then re-arrange the line-ups. I think Todd Wuerger focuses on two relays.
I'll be really, really interested to see how Mad. Memorial arranges its relay line-ups for both sectionals and state, and how they use Drives. I'm guessing they focus on the free relays, because Franken, Anderson and Salerno are all solid freestylers.
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