Gross fills up state slate
The Dogie Swim team wrapped up their regular season Friday at the Last Chance meet in Gillette. Although the team left with no new qualifiers, Harrison Gross filled the last slot on his state slate by swimming a qualifying time in the 100 Backstroke.
“It was a really quick meet, because we were there just to try to qualify,” head coach Doug Scribner explained. “We ended up having some really good time drops, and then other smaller time drops as well, but only Harrison swam a qualifying time.”
The last time Gross swam the 100 backstroke, he had just come off of swimming the 200 Freestyle Relay, so he was a bit fatigued going in. This time, however, the team opted to forgo swimming the relays and really approached the meet with the intention of only swimming individual events in order to get qualifying times. So, this time Gross
went in fresh and cut .67 of a second off his time to hit the 3A qualifying standard.
“Harrison has been wanting to qualify in the backstroke, and he
did so now that sets him up to be qualified in every event for state,” Scribner said.
John Sandrini notched the biggest time drop when he cut about 15 seconds in the 500 Freestyle.
“The last time he swam it, he really thought he could drop time and try to qualify so that’s what we worked on over the week,” Scribner said. “He knew what he needed to do per 50, and he ended up just six seconds short of making the qualifying time. He was happy with his time drop, but bummed out that he didn’t qualify.”
Lucas Scribner had a good time drop in the breaststroke and just missed qualifying by two seconds.
Logan Olson swam the 200 Freestyle and actually added 29 seconds. However, as it is a freestyle race, Olson opted to complete the event swimming the backstroke rather than the actual freestyle stroke.
“I have wanted to do the backstroke for a while now, and I needed a time for club state, so I figured that the last chance meet was as good a time as any to give it a try,” Olson said. “It was a lot of fun and I got my time, so that was great!”
The 3A State Boys Swimming and Diving Championships take place Thursday and Friday in Gillette starting with diving at 12:30 on Thursday. All individual qualifiers have pretty much nailed down which two events they will be competing in.
“We are looking at having the four guys who are qualified swim the events that are their strongest,” Scribner said. “We’ll do the same 200 medley relay we did at conference and then will probably load up our 200 Free and 400 Free relays.”
