Swimmers compete at conference meet

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
In an imperfect situation, the 3A East swim teams made their conference meet work. 
On Friday, Douglas and Newcastle travelled to Buffalo to create their own pre-conference meet in order to simulate an actual conference meet which was altered due to Covid this year. 
According to head swim coach Doug Scribner, some of the girls swam the same events on Saturday, just so they could get the feel for doing a true post-season competition. 
“We wanted to try to make it as close to a real post-season meet as we could,” he began. “It was a little different than what a real preliminary meet would be because there was nothing riding on it and it was just the three teams, but we wanted to give the girls an experience that was close to the real thing.”
The Lady Dogies swam well on Friday with Brooklyn Schmitz dropping over a second in the 50 Free, Rebekah Olson taking almost three minutes off her time in the 100 Butterfly, Raeleigh Shipp saw a slight improvement in the 100 Free, and Schmitz took nearly three seconds off her best time in the 100 Backstroke. 
“Always the strategy in these two-day meets is to be competitive on Friday and then come out and have energy on Saturday for the finals,” Scribner explained. “State will be the normal format of prelims on Friday and finals on Saturday, so we wanted to try to give the girls that experience.”
Newcastle hosted half of the 3A East Conference Meet on Saturday, once again competing against Buffalo and Douglas. It was set up the same way a regular post-season meet would be, with the swimmers being announced for each finals event and allowing them to have their walk-in. 
In addition, as Newcastle was hosting three of the teams, Worland was doing the same simultaneously with the other three teams of the 3A East Conference. Through shared Google documents, the two schools were able to tabulate results so the top 12 swimmers were recognized in each event, while the top six got to stand on the podium to celebrate their finishes. 
“Medals” were given though the real ones were in Worland where the meet was originally scheduled to take place, and Scribner thought that it worked out pretty well in the long run.  
“It actually worked really well because you could really see the anticipation from the athletes and the fans. Because they couldn’t actually see how the other three teams swam, they had to wait to see how things fell out regarding individual finishes, and that was pretty cool,” he smiled. “They might have won the race here, but they didn’t know if they had been fast enough to win against swimmers in Worland. There were some pleasant surprises, as teams and individual swimmers awaited the announcement to see how they finished overall.”
Hannah Gross decided to swim the 200 Free and the 100 Backstroke at Conference, and she did that in order to get an idea where she stood, because those are almost certainly the two events she will compete in at the State meet.
Though she easily won the contest in Newcastle, touching the wall 17 seconds before the second place finisher, she was behind Tara Joyce of Cody by nearly 10 seconds. Joyce swam a 1:53 which was four seconds faster than she went two weeks ago in Buffalo. 
Throughout the season, Gross and Scribner have been aware of the abilities of Joyce, however the two haven’t been in the pool at the same time in the 200 Free. Her Conference time is certainly fast, and Gross has not finished under that time, however the senior thrives on competition and is excited to race her to see how she does. 
One drawback of conducting the Conference meet in this manner was not being able to have all six teams together where swimmers could actually race against each other. 
“That was one of the things that gave Hannah confidence last year. We were anticipating that Olivia from Lander was going to be her competition, so we were able to work out a schedule where we swam against her four times during the season, and we haven’t been able to do that this year,” Scribner acknowledged. “We have only swam against Cody one time and those two didn’t swim the same event so the first time it’s going to happen will be at the state meet.”
Though Gross had to settle for second in the 200 Free, she was the Conference Champion in the 100 Backstroke, touching the wall three and a half seconds before the second-place finisher in Worland. 
Becca Henkle earned a personal best score in the 11-dive format on Saturday. Buffalo has two strong divers, and Douglas also has a diver who is very good. Henkle hung in there with the top divers and ended up taking third behind the Buffalo divers with a score of 305.65. 
“Becca was excited and she just had this huge smile on her face,” Scrinber grinned. “Breaking 300 is very good and to finish in the top three was just a real feel-good moment.”
Lydia Anderson dropped a little in the 50 Free and is now just .54 of a second away from qualifying for State in that event. All four Lady Dogies who competed in the 50 Free dropped time with Olson having the most impressive finish shaving off two seconds in this very short race. 
Shipp dropped another second and a half in the 100 Free which she is still trying to qualify for, Autumn Mills took over nine and a half seconds off her 100 Breaststroke time and Schmitz was an astounding 18.37 seconds faster in the same event.  
Anderson and Shipp will have one more opportunity to cut time and get under the qualifying mark this week at the last chance qualifier in Gillette on Thursday.