It used to be a rare event when someone broke the 5 minute barrier in the girls 500 free.
In Div. 2, it's been accomplished six times by the event winner -- in 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2005, and last year by Brookfield Academy's Kelsey Hojan-Clark, who just missed the state record of 4:53.94 when she swam a 4:54.18.
In Div. 1, it's been even more rare -- once in 1992, twice by Middleton's Courtney Veerman in 2005 and 2006, and then by Madison East's Aja Van Hout in 2007. That is, until last year. 2008 was a breakthrough year in the 500 free in D1, as four swimmers broke the magical 5-minute mark, led by Van Hout's record-setting 4:48.60. The others: Muskego's duo of Brittany Walsh (4:52.87) and Jessica Wolf (4:57.78) and Middleton's Katie Delaney (4:54.65). Waukesha South/Mukwonago's Courtney Sheehan came close in finishing 5th with a time of 5:00.85.
It could be even faster this year in Div. 1. Last night, Madison West junior Ilsa Feierabend ripped off a 5:04.95 500 in a dual meet against Sun Prairie in the dungeon that is the Madison West pool. That's faster than Feierabend went last year at state, when she swam a 5:05.70 to place 8th. Earlier this year, Brookfield East's Sara Brzozowski - 19th last year at state -- swam a 5:06 in a dual meet, more than 11 seconds faster than what she swam at state. Several other swimmers this year have gone under 5:10, according to the state coaches top-30 time list, and it's not unusual for swimmers to drop up to 10 seconds or more as they taper for the end of the season.
Could we see a final-heat 500 free in Div. 1 this year with everyone going under 5 minutes? It may not be a stretch -- the D1 500 free is loaded this year, with the top eight finishers from last year's state meet, as well as 16 of the top 17 finishers, returning. In all, 20 of the 24 qualifiers for last year's D1 500 free return.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
About that Div. 2 coaches poll...
The latest Wisconsin Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association (WISCA) poll has DeForest listed as #1, followed by Madison Edgewood, Plymouth, Monona Grove, and Sauk Prairie. See: http://www.wisca.net/polls
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but the poll is clearly lacking a complete roster of top-tier D2 teams. Among the notable D2 teams not ranked: Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, and Elkhorn -- all teams expected to place in the top 10 at this year's state meet. Also missing are contributions from teams with some of the state's top swimmers -- like Berlin/Green Lake and defending 100 back champ Siri Smits, and Delavan-Darien and senior Emily McClellan, who's been having an outstanding season.
Ironically, the WISCA D1 poll is pretty complete, and looks to be an accurate reflection of how the D1 state meet is likely to play out -- Hartland Arrowhead the heavy favorite, with a bunch of teams (Madison Memorial, Waukesha South/Mukwonago, Muskego, the Burlington co-op and a few others) duking it out for 2nd place and top-five finishes.
And here's the thing about the WISCA poll -- it's totally merit-based. Rankings are determined by top-30 times, with only a given swimmer's two best top-ranked times counting in the calculation. That's unlike coaches polls in other sports (notably football), where regional biases and tradition sometimes overrule objective assessments of teams.
But the WISCA poll is entirely self-selecting -- coaches have to make the effort to submit complete and accurate times to make the thing work. So Div. 2 coaches -- if you're out there, submit those times!
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but the poll is clearly lacking a complete roster of top-tier D2 teams. Among the notable D2 teams not ranked: Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, and Elkhorn -- all teams expected to place in the top 10 at this year's state meet. Also missing are contributions from teams with some of the state's top swimmers -- like Berlin/Green Lake and defending 100 back champ Siri Smits, and Delavan-Darien and senior Emily McClellan, who's been having an outstanding season.
Ironically, the WISCA D1 poll is pretty complete, and looks to be an accurate reflection of how the D1 state meet is likely to play out -- Hartland Arrowhead the heavy favorite, with a bunch of teams (Madison Memorial, Waukesha South/Mukwonago, Muskego, the Burlington co-op and a few others) duking it out for 2nd place and top-five finishes.
And here's the thing about the WISCA poll -- it's totally merit-based. Rankings are determined by top-30 times, with only a given swimmer's two best top-ranked times counting in the calculation. That's unlike coaches polls in other sports (notably football), where regional biases and tradition sometimes overrule objective assessments of teams.
But the WISCA poll is entirely self-selecting -- coaches have to make the effort to submit complete and accurate times to make the thing work. So Div. 2 coaches -- if you're out there, submit those times!
The other invite last weekend
Although it didn't draw the powerful field of the Wisconsin Girls Invite at the UW Natatorium, the Fondy Cardinals Girls Invite produced some interesting results.
Bay Port, proving once again it's one of the better and deeper squads in the Fox Valley, won the invite handily with 357 points to 276 for the Oshkosh North/Oshkosh Lourdes co-op. And Bay Port won it without winning a single event. It's the Pirates second big invite win this year, having won the Ashwaubenon Invite earlier this fall.
Other notable results from the Fondy Invite:
-- Oshkosh North/Lourdes junior Rachel Revolinski won two individual events with solid times: the 200 free in 1:56.94 and the 100 breaststroke in 1:07.36. Revolinski is one of those versatile swimmers who may have a tough time choosing her two events for sectionals; last year, she finished 9th in the 200 IM and 11th in the 100 free at the Div. 1 state meet.
-- Green Bay East/Preble's Jasmine Lee -- who nearly bypassed her senior year of swimming -- was also a double winner, with a 2:12.67 win in the 200 IM and a 59.71 win in the 100 butterfly. Lee finished 4th last year at the D1 state meet in the IM and 5th in the 100 back. As an aside, the D1 200 IM this year looks particularly loaded, with the top seven finishers from last year returning and the potential of top freshmen like Eau Claire Memorial's Leah Pronschinske and Burlington's Anna Brooks swimming it as well.
-- Elkhorn sophomore Rachel Johnson led a strong showing by Elkhorn (3rd place, only six points behind the Oshkosh co-op) with wins in the 50 (25.51) and 100 (55.44) frees. Elkhorn could make some noise at this year's D2 state meet; the team has two very good swimmers in Johnson and senior Terrin Seaver and returns nearly everyone who scored points at last year's state meet, when the squad finished 10th. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's latest poll of teams in the southeast region has Elkhorn ranked 10th overall and 3rd among D2 teams, behind only Shorewood and Whitefish Bay.
-- Ashwaubenon senior Andrea Teske won the 500 free in a solid time of 5:14.36. Teske and Ashwaubenon this year get to move back down to Division 2 for sectional qualifying, which they will surely welcome. Teske as a sophomore placed 6th in the 200 free and 7th in the 500 free at the D2 state meet; last year, swimming against much faster competition when Ashwaubenon got moved up to Div. 1, she failed to make it to the state meet. Her time at the Fondy Invite is one of the fastest 500 free times posted this year by a D2 swimmer.
Bay Port, proving once again it's one of the better and deeper squads in the Fox Valley, won the invite handily with 357 points to 276 for the Oshkosh North/Oshkosh Lourdes co-op. And Bay Port won it without winning a single event. It's the Pirates second big invite win this year, having won the Ashwaubenon Invite earlier this fall.
Other notable results from the Fondy Invite:
-- Oshkosh North/Lourdes junior Rachel Revolinski won two individual events with solid times: the 200 free in 1:56.94 and the 100 breaststroke in 1:07.36. Revolinski is one of those versatile swimmers who may have a tough time choosing her two events for sectionals; last year, she finished 9th in the 200 IM and 11th in the 100 free at the Div. 1 state meet.
-- Green Bay East/Preble's Jasmine Lee -- who nearly bypassed her senior year of swimming -- was also a double winner, with a 2:12.67 win in the 200 IM and a 59.71 win in the 100 butterfly. Lee finished 4th last year at the D1 state meet in the IM and 5th in the 100 back. As an aside, the D1 200 IM this year looks particularly loaded, with the top seven finishers from last year returning and the potential of top freshmen like Eau Claire Memorial's Leah Pronschinske and Burlington's Anna Brooks swimming it as well.
-- Elkhorn sophomore Rachel Johnson led a strong showing by Elkhorn (3rd place, only six points behind the Oshkosh co-op) with wins in the 50 (25.51) and 100 (55.44) frees. Elkhorn could make some noise at this year's D2 state meet; the team has two very good swimmers in Johnson and senior Terrin Seaver and returns nearly everyone who scored points at last year's state meet, when the squad finished 10th. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's latest poll of teams in the southeast region has Elkhorn ranked 10th overall and 3rd among D2 teams, behind only Shorewood and Whitefish Bay.
-- Ashwaubenon senior Andrea Teske won the 500 free in a solid time of 5:14.36. Teske and Ashwaubenon this year get to move back down to Division 2 for sectional qualifying, which they will surely welcome. Teske as a sophomore placed 6th in the 200 free and 7th in the 500 free at the D2 state meet; last year, swimming against much faster competition when Ashwaubenon got moved up to Div. 1, she failed to make it to the state meet. Her time at the Fondy Invite is one of the fastest 500 free times posted this year by a D2 swimmer.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
2009 Wisconsin Girls Invitational
Highlights from the year's biggest meet so far (and there were plenty), swum at the US Natatorium Saturday. Warning -- long post ahead:
-- Hartland Arrowhead won, as expected, by a whopping 148 points over the host Madison Memorial squad -- 372-224. Last year, HA topped Memorial by 40 points. Guess we have a favorite -- a heavy one at that -- for this year's Div. 1 state meet. HA this year may not be quite up to the standards of the school's dominant 2004 and 2005 squads, which won nearly every event at state those two years. But it's awfully good; against some of the best competition in the state, HA qualified at least two swimmers into the two-heat meet finals, and often had multiple swimmers in the final heat. Its relay teams also came within two-tenths of a second of sweeping all three relays. It looks like the only thing that can stop HA on its march to a seventh state title in eight years is a massive outbreak of swine flu on the HA high school campus -- swimmers, wash those hands!
-- Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol won the competition among the D2 schools at the meet, and stamped itself as a serious threat to upend DeForest's quest for a fourth straight state title. The SB/S squad finished 7th overall at the meet with 115 points, 28 more than DeForest, which finished 11th overall with 87 points. In truth, the two D2 squads are exceedingly closely matched -- the SB/S Clippers deeper in the sprints, the Norskies deeper in the distance events, and perhaps a bit more balanced. Watch out for SB/S's 200 free relay -- it finished 4th at the meet, with a time of 1:40.99 (not its fastest of the season), and placed ahead of solid 200 free relays from teams such as Memorial, Wausau East, Oshkosh West and Eau Claire Memorial.
-- The night's best race featured a great story line -- the savvy veteran against the new kid on the block. In the end, experience won -- by the narrowest of margins. The 100 breaststroke final matched two-time defending state champ and senior Emily Russart of Badger/Big Foot/Williams Bay against Eau Claire Memorial's freshman phenom, Leah Pronschinske. The freshman posted the faster qualifying time, but Russart came off the blocks and out of her underwater pull ahead, and never gave up the lead, holding off a closing Pronschinske 1:04.37 to 1:04.38. Proschinske's arrival on the high school swimming scene has been highly anticipated, in part to her achieving an Olympic Trials cut while an 8th grader. Look for another terrific matchup between her and Russart at state.
-- Russart also played a key role in preventing an Arrowhead sweep in the relays -- the B3 medley relay of Ellie Lorenzi, Russart, Lindsey Mikrut and Maddie Clark held off HA 1:49.28 to 1:49.48. That's the same line-up for B3 that won state last year. Arrowhead tried to counter by switching ace sprinter Haley Pietila to the anchor leg of the medley. But after a closely contested backstroke leadoff leg between Lorenzi and HA's Kate Jones, Russart took over, swimming a scary-fast 28.99 breaststroke leg to break the race open. She topped Arrowhead's Caryn Knight -- no slouch in the breaststroke herself -- by more than two seconds on her leg, and HA never caught up. Great medleys are often made by breaststrokers, a point driven home by B3 Saturday night.
-- Give Madison East's Aja Van Hout credit -- alot of it, actually. After swimming a meet-record and state-leading 1:50.87 in the 200 free, she chose to swim the 100 butterfly against Arrowhead's Emma Goral. It's hard to say someone who's won state the past two years in the 200 IM, like Van Hout, has a weak stroke, but the butterfly may be it for her. It's certainly not her best one. But she took on Goral, the two-time defending state champ and maybe the strongest favorite in any single event this year in Division 1. The two went at it closely for the first 50 yards, but Goral's superior turns and strength in the end gave her a .53 seconds win in the event (and a meet record to boot, at 56.45). Van Hout, who loses an individual race about once a blue moon, deserves kudos for taking on one of the state's best.
-- Jackie Powell was the night's only double winner, taking both the 100 free and 100 back, where she is the defending state champ. Powell's win in the 100 free, in which she beat Pietila, last year's state runner-up in the event, pretty handily (52.38 for Powell to 52.83 for Pietila) led to some post-meet speculation about whether Powell was planning to switch out of the 200 free -- where she is also the defending state champ -- into the shorter sprint. Hard to imagine -- Powell just dominated the 200 free last year at state, beating Pietila by nearly two seconds. (Then again, and this is purely speculative, maybe there's just some gamesmanship going on between Powell and Van Hout, probably the two best swimmers in the state. Hard to imagine Van Hout switching out of the 200 IM, either, since she's the two-time defending state champ and won it by more than three seconds last year. But she has been swimming a lot of 200 frees so far this year...)
-- Pronschinske showed she wasn't just a one-event swimmer, either. The Eau Claire Memorial freshman won the 200 IM quite handily, by nearly two seconds. Granted, the event was missing Van Hout, but it included a number of top finishes from last year's state meet in the event, including runner-up Becca Soderholm of Madison East. Russart of B3 was within shouting distance at the turn toward the final freestyle legs, but Pronschinske impressively came home with a 30.58 anchor split. Overall, it was quite a meet for the Eau Claire freshman -- this invitational, unlike any other in the state, is run in a prelims/finals format, which makes for a very long day. For top-tier swimmers, it means they are swimming six events -- two heats of prelims, two heats of finals, plus two relays. For freshman especially, it can be a grueling day. But Proschinske held up well -- the mark of a very good swimmer.
-- For her first two years of high school swimming, she stood in the shadow of her sister. That's excusable, given that Ruby Martin left Madison East with four individual state titles and three relay titles. But now little sister Ivy is a junior, and demonstrating she may be one of the top pure sprinters in the state. She handily won the 50 free over a deep field that included Pietila, Wausau East's Lea Koenig and Lauren Sichterman, and two of the best freshmen in the state -- Arrowhead's Julia Mikota and Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol's Savanna Townsend. Martin's time of 24.17 beat Pietila by .33 seconds -- a pretty good amount in a 50 sprint.
-- Relays are often built around a dominant swimmer or two -- witness B3's medley relay. But Arrowhead's winning 200 free relay was a thing of beauty by its balance. Check out these splits -- Mikota, 24.79; Jones, 24.62; Holly Johnson, 24.83; Goral, 24.82. When your slowest and fastest splits are separated by only two-tenths of a second, you're doing something right.
-- Led by its tandem of Hilary Woldt and Natalie Bolin, Oshkosh West had a nice meet, finishing 4th with 134 points, ahead of notable teams like Badger/Big Foot/Williams Bay and Wausau East. The pair finished 7th and 8th in the 200 free, with Bolin then finishing 5th in the 500 free and Woldt 3rd in the backstroke. Oshkosh West will be looking to reclaim its sectional title that it lost to Neenah last year.
-- Finally, what's up with Muskego? Ranked 4th in the latest state coaches poll, and with a slew of top-tier swimmers, the team showed up for the prelims, swam pretty well, then skipped town. Distance aces Brittany Walsh and Jessica Wolf went 1-2 in qualifying for the 500 free, and other notable Muskego swimmers like Emma Szczupakiewicz and Sami Pochowski also swam in the prelims but not the finals. Maybe head coach Ed Hallett doesn't like the prelims/finals format of the meet. Anyone know? Feel free to comment.
Full results here:
http://www.spartanswimmingdiving.com/files/wisconsin_invite/2009/2009_Meet_Results.pdf
or simply go to http://www.spartanswimmingdiving.com/wisconsin_invite.html and click on 2009 results.
-- Hartland Arrowhead won, as expected, by a whopping 148 points over the host Madison Memorial squad -- 372-224. Last year, HA topped Memorial by 40 points. Guess we have a favorite -- a heavy one at that -- for this year's Div. 1 state meet. HA this year may not be quite up to the standards of the school's dominant 2004 and 2005 squads, which won nearly every event at state those two years. But it's awfully good; against some of the best competition in the state, HA qualified at least two swimmers into the two-heat meet finals, and often had multiple swimmers in the final heat. Its relay teams also came within two-tenths of a second of sweeping all three relays. It looks like the only thing that can stop HA on its march to a seventh state title in eight years is a massive outbreak of swine flu on the HA high school campus -- swimmers, wash those hands!
-- Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol won the competition among the D2 schools at the meet, and stamped itself as a serious threat to upend DeForest's quest for a fourth straight state title. The SB/S squad finished 7th overall at the meet with 115 points, 28 more than DeForest, which finished 11th overall with 87 points. In truth, the two D2 squads are exceedingly closely matched -- the SB/S Clippers deeper in the sprints, the Norskies deeper in the distance events, and perhaps a bit more balanced. Watch out for SB/S's 200 free relay -- it finished 4th at the meet, with a time of 1:40.99 (not its fastest of the season), and placed ahead of solid 200 free relays from teams such as Memorial, Wausau East, Oshkosh West and Eau Claire Memorial.
-- The night's best race featured a great story line -- the savvy veteran against the new kid on the block. In the end, experience won -- by the narrowest of margins. The 100 breaststroke final matched two-time defending state champ and senior Emily Russart of Badger/Big Foot/Williams Bay against Eau Claire Memorial's freshman phenom, Leah Pronschinske. The freshman posted the faster qualifying time, but Russart came off the blocks and out of her underwater pull ahead, and never gave up the lead, holding off a closing Pronschinske 1:04.37 to 1:04.38. Proschinske's arrival on the high school swimming scene has been highly anticipated, in part to her achieving an Olympic Trials cut while an 8th grader. Look for another terrific matchup between her and Russart at state.
-- Russart also played a key role in preventing an Arrowhead sweep in the relays -- the B3 medley relay of Ellie Lorenzi, Russart, Lindsey Mikrut and Maddie Clark held off HA 1:49.28 to 1:49.48. That's the same line-up for B3 that won state last year. Arrowhead tried to counter by switching ace sprinter Haley Pietila to the anchor leg of the medley. But after a closely contested backstroke leadoff leg between Lorenzi and HA's Kate Jones, Russart took over, swimming a scary-fast 28.99 breaststroke leg to break the race open. She topped Arrowhead's Caryn Knight -- no slouch in the breaststroke herself -- by more than two seconds on her leg, and HA never caught up. Great medleys are often made by breaststrokers, a point driven home by B3 Saturday night.
-- Give Madison East's Aja Van Hout credit -- alot of it, actually. After swimming a meet-record and state-leading 1:50.87 in the 200 free, she chose to swim the 100 butterfly against Arrowhead's Emma Goral. It's hard to say someone who's won state the past two years in the 200 IM, like Van Hout, has a weak stroke, but the butterfly may be it for her. It's certainly not her best one. But she took on Goral, the two-time defending state champ and maybe the strongest favorite in any single event this year in Division 1. The two went at it closely for the first 50 yards, but Goral's superior turns and strength in the end gave her a .53 seconds win in the event (and a meet record to boot, at 56.45). Van Hout, who loses an individual race about once a blue moon, deserves kudos for taking on one of the state's best.
-- Jackie Powell was the night's only double winner, taking both the 100 free and 100 back, where she is the defending state champ. Powell's win in the 100 free, in which she beat Pietila, last year's state runner-up in the event, pretty handily (52.38 for Powell to 52.83 for Pietila) led to some post-meet speculation about whether Powell was planning to switch out of the 200 free -- where she is also the defending state champ -- into the shorter sprint. Hard to imagine -- Powell just dominated the 200 free last year at state, beating Pietila by nearly two seconds. (Then again, and this is purely speculative, maybe there's just some gamesmanship going on between Powell and Van Hout, probably the two best swimmers in the state. Hard to imagine Van Hout switching out of the 200 IM, either, since she's the two-time defending state champ and won it by more than three seconds last year. But she has been swimming a lot of 200 frees so far this year...)
-- Pronschinske showed she wasn't just a one-event swimmer, either. The Eau Claire Memorial freshman won the 200 IM quite handily, by nearly two seconds. Granted, the event was missing Van Hout, but it included a number of top finishes from last year's state meet in the event, including runner-up Becca Soderholm of Madison East. Russart of B3 was within shouting distance at the turn toward the final freestyle legs, but Pronschinske impressively came home with a 30.58 anchor split. Overall, it was quite a meet for the Eau Claire freshman -- this invitational, unlike any other in the state, is run in a prelims/finals format, which makes for a very long day. For top-tier swimmers, it means they are swimming six events -- two heats of prelims, two heats of finals, plus two relays. For freshman especially, it can be a grueling day. But Proschinske held up well -- the mark of a very good swimmer.
-- For her first two years of high school swimming, she stood in the shadow of her sister. That's excusable, given that Ruby Martin left Madison East with four individual state titles and three relay titles. But now little sister Ivy is a junior, and demonstrating she may be one of the top pure sprinters in the state. She handily won the 50 free over a deep field that included Pietila, Wausau East's Lea Koenig and Lauren Sichterman, and two of the best freshmen in the state -- Arrowhead's Julia Mikota and Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol's Savanna Townsend. Martin's time of 24.17 beat Pietila by .33 seconds -- a pretty good amount in a 50 sprint.
-- Relays are often built around a dominant swimmer or two -- witness B3's medley relay. But Arrowhead's winning 200 free relay was a thing of beauty by its balance. Check out these splits -- Mikota, 24.79; Jones, 24.62; Holly Johnson, 24.83; Goral, 24.82. When your slowest and fastest splits are separated by only two-tenths of a second, you're doing something right.
-- Led by its tandem of Hilary Woldt and Natalie Bolin, Oshkosh West had a nice meet, finishing 4th with 134 points, ahead of notable teams like Badger/Big Foot/Williams Bay and Wausau East. The pair finished 7th and 8th in the 200 free, with Bolin then finishing 5th in the 500 free and Woldt 3rd in the backstroke. Oshkosh West will be looking to reclaim its sectional title that it lost to Neenah last year.
-- Finally, what's up with Muskego? Ranked 4th in the latest state coaches poll, and with a slew of top-tier swimmers, the team showed up for the prelims, swam pretty well, then skipped town. Distance aces Brittany Walsh and Jessica Wolf went 1-2 in qualifying for the 500 free, and other notable Muskego swimmers like Emma Szczupakiewicz and Sami Pochowski also swam in the prelims but not the finals. Maybe head coach Ed Hallett doesn't like the prelims/finals format of the meet. Anyone know? Feel free to comment.
Full results here:
http://www.spartanswimmingdiving.com/files/wisconsin_invite/2009/2009_Meet_Results.pdf
or simply go to http://www.spartanswimmingdiving.com/wisconsin_invite.html and click on 2009 results.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Big meet in Madison
The Wisconsin Girls Invite, hosted by Madison Memorial, takes place this Saturday at the UW Natatorium. A number of top D1 and D2 teams will be there, including defending D1 state champs Hartland-Arrowhead (ranked #1 in the latest state coach's poll), the #2 ranked host team, and #4 Muskego, along with top D2 squads like DeForest, Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol, and Madison Edgewood.
Just like last year, it will be done in the prelims-final format, making for a long day for the swimmers. Look for Arrowhead to do well; it should be fun to see how the remaining D1 and D2 teams sort themselves out in a pool many will be swimming at for state next month.
Just like last year, it will be done in the prelims-final format, making for a long day for the swimmers. Look for Arrowhead to do well; it should be fun to see how the remaining D1 and D2 teams sort themselves out in a pool many will be swimming at for state next month.
Big win for Milton
Milton won its big dual meet with Madison Edgewood this past Tuesday 91-79 in a matchup between two undefeated squads in the always competitive Badger South Conference. Edgewood had won the season-opening Badger South relays meet, but Milton was able to turn the tables with a solid showing from its strong freshmen class and a remarkable showing by senior Jennah Haney.
Remarkable, because in a meet where every first-place finish was critical, Haney pulled off one of the most difficult doubles in the sport -- winning the 100 fly and then coming right back in the next event and winning the 100 free. After a brief rest, Haney then came back to anchor Milton's winning 200 free relay that out-touched Edgewood by a mere four-hundreths of a second.
The Milton squad also got a solid double-win from sophomore Stacey Kincade in the 200 IM (2:18.60) and 500 free (5:22.29). Edgewood's depth kept the meet close, but in the end, Milton's ability to pull out lots of wins -- 9 of the 11 races contested -- and Haney's remarkable double gave the hosts the win.
Remarkable, because in a meet where every first-place finish was critical, Haney pulled off one of the most difficult doubles in the sport -- winning the 100 fly and then coming right back in the next event and winning the 100 free. After a brief rest, Haney then came back to anchor Milton's winning 200 free relay that out-touched Edgewood by a mere four-hundreths of a second.
The Milton squad also got a solid double-win from sophomore Stacey Kincade in the 200 IM (2:18.60) and 500 free (5:22.29). Edgewood's depth kept the meet close, but in the end, Milton's ability to pull out lots of wins -- 9 of the 11 races contested -- and Haney's remarkable double gave the hosts the win.
Up North -- the fight for who's best
Let's be honest -- swim fans in the greater Madison and Milwaukee areas tend to be a bit disdainful of swimming north of their two respective orbits. Perhaps with some reason -- only one team in the history of the girls state meet (Sauk Prairie, 2002) has arguably come from outside those two metropolitan areas.
Conventional wisdom suggested the Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol girls squad could make some noise at this year's Div. 2 state meet. But it looks like they might not be the only northern team to push their way into contention. At last weekend's Plymouth Invitational, the host squad edged out SB/S 618-583 in an eight-team invitational dominated by the two squds.
Plymouth is led by super sophomore Katie Criter, the defending state champ in the 100 breaststroke and runner-up in the 100 butterfly. Criter is a versatile swimmer -- she's posted top-five times in five individual events so far in the state coach's top-30 rankings -- and she won the fly and breaststroke at her team's invite. But Plymouth showed at their invitational they are far from a one-swimmer squad; fellow sophomore Sarah Coley picked up a win in the 100 free, and Plymouth was able to "out-depth" SB/S for the win.
Of course, SB/S shouldn't be dimissed based on one meet. Indeed -- with wins at the Plymouth Invite in all three relays, plus four individual wins -- they are the kind of squad likely to do well at sectionals and state.
One thing's for certain -- this year's D2 Plymouth sectional is absolutely loaded. Defending state runner-up Whitefish Bay, with a senior-laded squad, will be joined by Plymouth, SB/S, a solid Shorewood squad, an improving Port Washington team, and teams like Grafton and Brookfield Academy that include past individual state champions. It should be a good one to watch.
Conventional wisdom suggested the Sturgeon Bay/Sevastopol girls squad could make some noise at this year's Div. 2 state meet. But it looks like they might not be the only northern team to push their way into contention. At last weekend's Plymouth Invitational, the host squad edged out SB/S 618-583 in an eight-team invitational dominated by the two squds.
Plymouth is led by super sophomore Katie Criter, the defending state champ in the 100 breaststroke and runner-up in the 100 butterfly. Criter is a versatile swimmer -- she's posted top-five times in five individual events so far in the state coach's top-30 rankings -- and she won the fly and breaststroke at her team's invite. But Plymouth showed at their invitational they are far from a one-swimmer squad; fellow sophomore Sarah Coley picked up a win in the 100 free, and Plymouth was able to "out-depth" SB/S for the win.
Of course, SB/S shouldn't be dimissed based on one meet. Indeed -- with wins at the Plymouth Invite in all three relays, plus four individual wins -- they are the kind of squad likely to do well at sectionals and state.
One thing's for certain -- this year's D2 Plymouth sectional is absolutely loaded. Defending state runner-up Whitefish Bay, with a senior-laded squad, will be joined by Plymouth, SB/S, a solid Shorewood squad, an improving Port Washington team, and teams like Grafton and Brookfield Academy that include past individual state champions. It should be a good one to watch.
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