Dogies still perfect on the season

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter 
 
The pressure is on for the Newcastle men’s swim team. So far, the squad has added a new qualifier or new event to the state slate in every weekend of competition, and last weekend, after competing in Worland on Friday and Douglas on Saturday, was no exception.
Zade Orsborn, who previously qualified for the 100 Butterfly event, added to his state slate on Saturday when he swam a qualifying time in the 200 IM in Douglas. In addition, the junior also shaved time and picked up a new personal best in the butterfly on Friday. 
“Zade had a good weekend by qualifying in his second event, and he is very close in the 200 and the 100 Free races,” head coach Doug Scribner explained. “He has a pretty ambitious goal of wanting to place at state in the Fly. As such, he dropped another second from his best time and will keep chipping away at that.”
Conrad Prell was just four seconds off a qualifying time in the 400 Meter Freestyle event on Saturday. Prell missed out on qualifying last season due to a nagging injury, so it’s been two years since he swam a qualifying time in the grueling race. Scribner surmised that having a swimmer in the next lane to compete against may have been the inspiration Prell needed to alter his race plan.
“Conrad has been in a bit of a rut, so having that kid to race really helped him out. He stayed with him the whole way and poured it on in the final 75 to get the better of him by over half a pool length,” Scribner explained. “He was able to get over the hump and got more aggressive in the second half of his race. I think he just realized he could do it and pulled ahead.”
James Cox dropped five seconds in the 200 IM on Saturday, and Nate Strickland swam that race for the first time on Friday, finishing with a pretty good time. Grayson Ramsey improved his time in the 50 Free by .7 of a second. This is the next event he thinks he wants to try to qualify for and is just a little over a second away from doing so.
Cox was also on his best time in the Backstroke, but as Scribner explained, his time was a good one given that was the last race of three in a row he had swam.
In comparing the two days of competition, Scribner analyzed that the Worland meet went well as the team had several improvements. The Warriors have a pool similar to the Dogies’ pool so the squad generally does pretty well there.
“What I’m excited about is that we are getting faster in our Medley Relay, so I’m pretty confident we will get under two minutes in that race,” Scribner smiled. “The last time we did that was probably in 2009, so it would be awesome to do it again.” 
Douglas has a meter pool which prompted Scribner to stress to his swimmers not to worry about their end times as those would be adjusted, but rather to focus on racing and their finishes would work themselves out.
“The first time we went against Douglas, they beat us by 25 and the second time they got us by 10,” he began. “Unfortunately, we were down two guys there so they beat us again.” 
This week the Dogies will compete in Sheridan on Friday and Kelly Walsh on Saturday, and Scribner expects to be back to a full roster for both. 
“We have historically swam very well at Kelly Walsh so I am hoping to get a couple more qualifying times again this weekend,” he stated.  “We have good momentum right now and there are some good things happening so we want to maintain that.”