Dogies finish strong

The Dogies, with only seven swimmers total and four individual qualifiers, performed extremely well at the 2025 Boys State Swimming and Diving Championships last weekend, finishing sixth out of 11 teams with 87 points. Their sixth-place finish is the highest for Newcastle High School boys’ swimming since 2005, when the team finished fifth with 155 points.

Sam Scribner was top six in diving, Gabe Hoover and Harrison Gross were top six in the 200 IM and 500 Freestyle, respectively, while the 200 Freestyle and 400 Freestyle Relay teams of Scribner, Hoover Gross and Logan Olson also made it to finals by finishing in the top six as well.

Gross and Olson started off individual events in the Friday preliminaries by competing in the open 200 Free. Both swimmers swam personal best times, with Gross finishing just out of placing potential in seventh place, and then was eighth in the consolation finals on Saturday. Olson finished 14th, so did not make finals.

Hoover dove into his state meet by swimming the prelims of the 200 IM on Friday where he finished second to take that seeding into Saturday. In the finals, Hoover was just out-touched by half-a-second by Lander in the battle for second place.

“I was the fastest in my heat in prelims so I didn’t have anyone to race, but I still dropped time, so I guess that’s good,” Hoover said. “I knew that the Lander kid is fast, and Tommy (first place) was between us so I couldn’t see (Lander) very well, but it was still a good swim for me.”

After not a lot of rest following the prelims on Friday, Hoover headed into the 500 Free prelims and was admittedly not feeling his best.

“There was no diving break on Friday, so Gabe didn’t have a lot of time to recover,” Scribner said. “He had a great time in the 200 IM, which didn’t set him up well for the 500. Even still, he was on his conference time of 5:24.”

Though Hoover anticipated that the best he could do would be 5:30, the sophomore powered through to finish in 5:27. However, that time didn’t get him into the top six.

On Saturday, in the consolation finals, he won his heat taking seventh place overall. Ironically, his personal best time of 5:19 would have placed him fourth if he had competed in the championship heat.

Next up was Sam Scribner in the 1 Meter diving. A strong start in the prelims, followed by solid diving in the semi-finals and finals had the senior on the podium in sixth place with 350.85 points.

“Samuel had three solid dives right off the bat in prelims, and then had two that weren’t so strong, so it kind of shook his confidence a little bit,” Scribner said. “But then he had a break and came back solid with his next three in the semis. Going into finals on Saturday, he also did well, but where he was sitting with points, it was going to be tough to make up 20 points to move up.”

Gross had his best swim of the weekend in the 500 Free where he shaved nearly 12 seconds off his previous best time in the prelims to finish fourth and advance to the finals. On Saturday, he took an additional three seconds off his PR to move up to third in that event.

“Harrison had a great swim and a huge improvement in his time,” Scribner said. “His time (5:17.38) was close to the school record, which is around 5:08, which was a great way to end his career.”

The 200 Free Relay team were confident heading into prelims and went into finals with a fifth-place seeding. Rawlins switched up their lineup and slipped by Newcastle by less than a second on Saturday, leaving the Dogies with sixth place overall.

“Gabe and Harrison had more rest going into the two-free relay than they did at conference, so we dropped time in the prelims,” Scribner said. “Then we dropped even more time in the finals (finished in 1:36.87, the fastest time since 2006).”

The 400 Free Relay team finished sixth in both prelims and finals. Their finals time of 3:34.51 is the best time posted by a four-free team in Scribner’s two-decade tenure.

“I had us ranked eighth going into the prelims, so we knew we were going to have to really push hard on Friday,” Scribner said. “For finals, I moved the order to have Harrison and Gabe anchor, and told Logan he had to lead us off strong. His split was 53 seconds, which is the fastest time he’s ever had, so he did what he needed to do.”

Olson also swam the 100 Free as an individual event. He ended up 15th in prelims, but posted a PR of 54.77 seconds.

The Dogies will graduate Gross, Sam Scribner and Olson from this year’s team, and Coach Scribner anticipates only one known po-
tential addition to his squad next season. As such, team results will suffer in 2025-26 with only five swimmers, but there are individual goals still to be met.

“I want to be sub-two minutes in the 200 IM next year, and I want to break the school record in the 500 as well since I’m only six seconds away from that,” Hoover said. “I think I might be able to get the 50 Free school record next year, too.”