Swimmers face tough competition in Laramie

The Lady Dogie Swim Team was definitely small fish swimming in a big pond Friday and Saturday in Laramie, where they went up against 22 teams who were mostly 4A on Friday, then turned around to do it again on Saturday.
“The meet was gigantic and competition was excellent, and the girls handled it really well,” began head coach Doug Scribner. “They were still tired, but they fought through it, and even though we didn’t get any new qualifiers, we did see more improvement than we have in the last couple of weeks, so they swam tough in a pretty huge pool of competitors.”
In terms of the number of improvements seen over the weekend, it was definitely up from previous weeks. 
Raeleigh Shipp was among those who improved in her races, however, she fell just short of qualifying, which was her goal for the weekend. She was just half a second short in the 200 Freestyle, and three-tenths of a second in the 50 Freestyle. 
“She was so close, so that was a bummer,” Scribner sighed. “She was pretty sad because we were expecting her to make it in Laramie.”
Hailey Beastrom was also still short in the 100 Backstroke, which has been her goal event for the state meet. 
“We’re taking things out fast like we want to, but we’re not finishing like we should,” Scribner explained. “That tells me that we’re still tired, and we’re just at the beginning of taper, so that should improve over the next two weeks.”
Being such a big meet, the ladies were swimming in heats with people who were seeded with times close to their own, so they could really go out and race and have someone close to their time to push them. According to Scribner, everyone used that to their advantage to pick up season best times. 
The biggest improvement came on Saturday with Rebekah Olson, who dropped almost 30 seconds from her time in Douglas in the 500 Freestyle. 
On Saturday, Scribner entered his fastest four swimmers in the 200 Free Relay, and the strategy paid off as the team of Beastrom, Kyah Miller, Shipp and Lydia Anderson put up a season best time of 1:58.28, the first time this year that the team has been under two minutes.  
“The girls were pretty excited when I told them that it was the fastest we’ve been in a long time,” Scribner described. “In fact, it’s the best time we’ve put up since 2009.”
The four swam against another team who was seeded just a bit faster than they were, so Scribner advised his swimmers to use them to improve. Not only did they do just that to better their time, but they also beat the other team to the wall.
“I think that with the other improvements we’ve seen in the open 50 Free, we should be able to be even faster this weekend and at state,” Scribner said. “If we improve what I think we’re capable of, we have a chance of making it into the top six at state.”
Shipp swam under qualifying time in her leg of the 200 Freestyle, so that bodes well for her shot at the open 50 Freestyle at conference competition this week.
The Lady Dogies still have three swims left to punch their ticket to state with two in the conference meet in Buffalo Friday and Saturday, then the qualifier next week. Unlike track, in order to qualify for the state meet in swimming you must swim the qualifying time regardless of your finish at the conference meet. 
“Buffalo is a shorter trip than Laramie, and we’ll have one more week of taper, so we’re feeling good about the opportunity this weekend,” Scribner surmised. “We just need to clean up a couple of things and get our confidence up, and we’ll be fine.”