Dogies make a splash

The Dogie Swim team made the long trek to Cody last weekend for the 3A East Conference Meet and left their mark while also making history for Newcastle boys swimming in head coach Doug Scribner’s tenure.

“Getting the whole team into finals in an individual event is a huge accomplishment for us,” Scribner said “That’s the team we are. We are tough and we are competitive, and we really came together this season to do well as a team.”

In the two-day event, all seven swimmers on the team advanced from the preliminaries on Friday to the finals on Saturday, with three swimmers vying for podium spots in six different events. That resulted in the team scoring 154 points in the meet, which was 51 more points than they did last year at conference.

“We had Gabe (Hoover), Harrison (Gross) and Samuel (Scribner) finish top six in two events each,” Scribner said.

Hoover led the charge for the Dogies as he battled his way to a conference championship in the 500 Freestyle, and was runner-up in the 200 IM.

“That was the icing on the cake,” Scribner said. “Gabe had a totally mind-blowing swim in the finals of the 500. He went in second slowest in the heat and he owned the entire finals race from the start. He got out ahead and he never looked back.”

Hoover was on the outside of the pool for the 500, given his finish in the prelims on Friday. As such, the top seeded swimmer couldn’t really see him.

“On Friday, my strategy was just to make it into the top six because as long as I was in, I could still race to win,” Hoover explained. “In finals, I gave it my all in the 200 IM, and in the 500 I just went out and raced my best. If it wasn’t good enough to win, then it wasn’t. I kind of had a dark-horse advantage swimming the 500 on the outside lane. I was close enough that I could see my coach and I could also see people in the middle of the pool, but it’s not easy for them to see me. The kid in the middle who was supposed to win was shocked when he finished the race and saw that I beat him.”

The top two finishers in the finals at the conference meet earn All-Conference honors, so Hoover made the All-Conference team in both the 200 IM and the 500 Freestyle.

Gross finished third in the 200 Freestyle and fourth in the 500 Free.

“Harrison was happy with how he did overall,” Scribner said. “He would have liked to drop more time in the 500, but he had been battling being sick the whole week so he did really well considering.”

Sam improved his fourth-place standing after the diving prelims to take third place in that event, then had a great swim in the 100 Freestyle to finish sixth in both prelims (where he swam a personal record) and finals and notched a 3A state qualifying time in both of those races as well.

“Samuel has been really focusing on diving, so he hasn’t really been swimming all that much in practice,” Scribner said. “He had qualified in the 100 Free as a sophomore, but it was great to see him swim it so well to not only get into the finals, but also to qualify.”

The 200 Freestyle Relay team of Logan Olson, Sam, Gross and Hoover finished second in prelims and third in finals. Despite dropping a place in the finals, the squad improved their time by three seconds from Friday’s race, doing so with Gross and Hoover having just finished the grueling 500 Free race in the previous event.

“Cody out-touched us just by a couple of hundreths of a second in the finals, and Gabe admitted that if he just hadn’t breathed on his last stroke, that could have been the difference between second and third. It was still our fastest time of the season,” Scribner said. “Based on prelims with Logan leading off and Samuel going second, Logan suggested having Samuel lead off for the finals to get the team out ahead. It was a good choice, because Logan had a faster split on Friday.”

Olson finished just out of podium possibilities in the 200 Freestyle when he finished seventh in both the prelims and the finals. The senior did post a PR in the event on Saturday, however, when he swam a 2:04, cutting nearly two seconds off his previous best time.

“Logan probably had the toughest meet because he does the 200 Free, the 200 Free Relay and the backstroke so his events are pretty close together,” Scribner said. “There wasn’t a lot of rest between the Two Free and the backstroke so he just missed out on getting into the finals.”

This week, the Dogies will travel to Gillette on Friday for the Last Chance meet where Isaiah Anderson, John Sandrini and Lucas Scribner will attempt to get qualified in the events where they are close.