Anderson punches her ticket

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
 
At about the midpoint of the season, the Lady Dogies hosted their first home competitions and junior Lydia Anderson turned it on in front of her hometown fans to qualify for not one, but two events on Friday and Saturday.
Head coach Doug Scribner was expecting Anderson to make the time in the 100 Free as that has been a focus so far this season, but admitted being more than pleasantly surprised to see her qualify for the 50 Free as well.
“She had a great race in the 50 on Friday, and took two seconds off her best time,” Scribner said. “And, she won the race on top of qualifying so that was exciting!”
Anderson posted a 4A qualifying time of 27.66 seconds in the 50 Free, and then on Saturday, put up a 3A qualifying time of 1:03.46 in the
100 Free.
“Her time in the 100 was pretty significant for her because she suffered a shoulder injury this summer, so for her to be able to do that is great given the situation,” Scribner declared. “She’s been doing a lot of kicking, so I put her in just a couple of events this week so she didn’t overdo it, and that helped as well.”
Raeleigh Shipp also had a strong weekend. She shares with Anderson a goal of qualifying in the 100 Free, and is just a couple of seconds away from doing just that.
“I am confident that she will get that time, and she is working toward that as her goal,” Scribner nodded. “Raeleigh was a breaststroker, but she developed a problem with her hip so she’s learning and adjusting to the Freestyle. We’re really kind of trying to catch up in that stroke.”
Hailey Beastrom is in a similar boat, as she too is strong in the breaststroke and trying to perfect her freestyle. So Scribner admitted that he is trying to train two breaststrokers to be freestylers. 
Rebekah Olson improved 1:43 in the Butterfly from Friday to Saturday. 
“With Rebekah, it’s about coordinating her arm technique and staying smooth,” Scribner analyzed. “She has a good dolphin kick so that really helps her there.”
Lilly Ralls dropped quite a bit of time in her races as well over the weekend. Though she DQ’d in the 100 Breaststroke, she dropped over 40 seconds from her time in Lander. 
Ruth Rose, who is new to swimming, is improving every week, and last weekend was no exception. 
“As soon as Lilly swims the breaststroke and doesn’t DQ, she should have a pretty good time,” Scribner anticipated. “Ruth races and is competitive, so as soon as she gets the technique down, we can really start to train for faster times.”
“We made some individual improvement overall, but from my perspective, we are about where we should be as far as being tired, so I feel good about that,” Scribner continued. “The fatigue showed a little bit in the 400 Free Relay on Saturday. Where we’ve typically been able to drop a little bit of time, we didn’t do that as much this weekend.”
Scribner is continuing to work on the combination of swimmers for the 200 Medley Relay due to most everyone being capable of swimming all the strokes. According to the coach, it’s a matter of finding
the right fit for each of the legs of the race. 
This weekend, the team will head to Buffalo on Friday for a Triangular and then on to Worland for an invite on Saturday.