Diving in

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The Lady Dogie swim team was without four members as they traveled to Douglas last Friday and Saturday for the
3A East Conference swim meet. Despite their lack of numbers, individual performances had head coach Doug Scribner pleased with his team’s performance.
Hannah Gross went into both of her individual events on Friday enjoying the top seed, but in the 50 Freestyle she held the slimmest .10 of a second advantage over the second seed from Buffalo. She was also just barely ahead of a girl from Cody who put up similar times all season in the 100 Backstroke.
Gross thrives on competitive challenges, however, so she embraced the moment in each event to touch the wall first in the prelims and the finals in both races.
“Hannah swam great in the 50 Free and we went into the backstroke with a little strategy,” Scribner began. “Because they had similar times all season, I figured the Cody girl would be ahead in the first 50 so I told Hannah not to let that get in her head and to wait and be patient and be ready to push her last 25 and finish strong.”
“After the first 50, the Cody girl was a body length ahead, which was when I started to wonder if it was the right strategy,” Scribner laughed. “Hannah started to catch her at 75 meters and off the turn, she caught up and beat her by about half a body length. It was a pretty exciting race. At the
75 meter mark, I’m sure everyone was probably thinking it was a done deal, but Hannah poured it on!”
The second highlight from the meet was Becca Henkle’s finals race in the 100 Butterfly. The sophomore entered preliminaries as the seventh seed, but when she came out of the race, she had dropped to the 11th seed for the finals. 
“Becca’s Fly final was kind of reminiscent of last year when she was seeded low but made it to the finals in both of her events,” Scribner began. “Though she didn’t have a great swim in prelims, she was so strong in the finals. In fact, she almost won her heat and ended up just behind seventh place to take eighth in the consolation finals. It was a really exciting race to watch, so that was a lot of fun.”
Henkle’s second individual event was the 200 IM where she went in seeded 11th. Going in, Scribner was confident she would advance to finals, but Henkle had some nerves as she entered the race given she had disqualified in her most previous attempt.
“She was worried about DQing again, but the last time she did it was a fluke,” Scribner explained. “Unfortunately, she ended up being disqualified again, but for a different reason this time.”
Henkle’s disqualification resulted when she executed a flip turn at the end of the backstroke leg of the event when she was supposed to touch the wall on her back before going on to the next stroke. According to Scribner, had she not DQ’d, her time would have been such that she would have advanced to finals on Saturday as the 11th seed.
Autumn Mills was the final Dogie to make it to competition in the finals on Saturday. Like Gross, she was on deck to swim the 100 backstroke on the last day of competition and finished in 12th place.
With only five swimmers competing at the Conference Meet, Scribner had to balance individual events with relays. As such, there was no 200 Free relay team due to having two of the five entered into
the backstroke, and there wasn’t a Dogie entered into the 200 Freestyle individual race due to it following the 200 Medley Relay.
The 200 Medley relay team consisted of Gross swimming the backstroke, Gracie Emmitt the breaststroke, Mills the butterfly and Kassidee Jeppesen finished it up with the freestyle. As a team, they finished with the fifth seed in the prelims, but dropped to sixth in the finals despite cutting time from their Friday finish.
The 400 Free relay team of Jeppesen, Mills, Gross, and Henkle finished sixth in both the prelims and finals.
“The 400 Free has been a tough relay for us all year,” Scribner admitted. “We just don’t have four swimmers who have a good 100 Free, but we made it in so that’s all that matters.”
This week, the team will be back up to full capacity as they travel to Gillette on Thursday for the last chance qualifier. There, Madi Townsend will have one last shot to cut her time in the 200 Free and the 100 Backstroke for her chance to qualify for state. She was just a couple seconds away in both, and Scribner is hopeful that with having had a break from competing she should be able to get it done.