Swimmers continue to show improvement

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The Lady Dogies are moving ever nearer the end of their swim season, and are heading in the right direction to peak at the right time. Two competitions last weekend provided a few members of the team the opportunity to put up personal bests, be challenged by fast competition, and come within a hair’s breadth of qualifying for the state meet.
On Friday, the squad traveled to Casper for a quick dual against Kelly Walsh where Becca Henkle put up a personal best on the diving board, winning her second meet of the year and scoring 156.55 points in the process. She achieved her previous best score during the first meet of the year in Buffalo, and since then, she has added new and more difficult dives to her repertoire. 
“Becca executed her dives really well and got the win over the Kelly Walsh girl,” head coach Doug Scribner began. “She also did so throwing harder dives than she did earlier in the season, so that’s awesome to see her progressing like that.”
Lydia Anderson also had her best meet of the year as she dropped yet more time in both the 50 Free and the 100 Free and is now within just 10ths of a second from qualifying for the state meet in each event.
Though Hannah Gross didn’t drop time in her events, she was consistent in swimming the 200 Free and the 100 Butterfly and won both events with nine and four seconds to spare respectively.
“Right now we’re in a pretty good spot. The girls feel good, but when they get in the pool they talk about being tired and feeling sloppy, but they look good,” Scribner explained. “That’s a good place to be right now.”
On Saturday, the Lady Dogies traveled to Douglas where they got to see Buffalo and Douglas, and Rawlins for the first time this season. The venue in Douglas is a meter pool, so it’s difficult to see improvement comparing yards to meters, however, in comparison to the times the girls put up in Sheridan’s meter pool a couple of weeks ago, Scribner reported improved times for many of his swimmers.
Raeleigh Shipp swam the 200 Free and PR’d in that, dropping six seconds from her time in Sheridan, and she went on to drop time again in the 100 Free going a 1:11. Rebekah Olson also did well, dropping time in the 100 Backstroke.
Gross swam the 200 IM and the 100 Backstroke, and Scribner noted that her matchup in the IM was a great one for her. In the Lady Dogies’ first meet of the season, Gross swam against Makenna Lambert from Buffalo, and the two were matched up again on Saturday. Lambert has four strong strokes, while Gross is a little weak in breaststroke comparatively speaking. 
In that initial matchup, Lambert got the better of Gross and did so primarily in the breaststroke leg of the race, which is one of her strongest. Gross was excited to have a rematch in Douglas and she was able to drop time in the freestyle and the butterfly legs, but Lambert was able to pull out the win once again.
“Hannah thrives on that kind of competition, and she loves to have somebody she can race against,” Scribner smiled. “She was excited to race against Makenna because she is so fast in the IM, and it was an exciting race to watch.”
Gross rallied after the loss in that event to come back and win the 100 Backstroke comfortably with a five and a half second cushion. 
With just a couple of weeks before the conference meet, Scribner admitted that some of the girls are becoming a little frustrated that they are not seeing the time drops they would like to see. However, he noted that both Anderson and Shipp are very close to hitting the qualifying mark and that as the squad begins taper, they should start to see the results they are looking for in their events.
“This season, we have already put in way more work and it’s been harder work in the pool than it was last season,” Scribner declared. “As we start resting and get into taper, as good as they look with as tired as they are now, and even though they’ve only made little improvements up to this point, for as much as they’ve actually done, we are in a really good spot.”
Scribner went on to state that he feels confident that as the team starts to rest up during taper, Anderson and Shipp especially should be able to get qualified by the conference meet.
This week, the Lady Dogies will be competing in Gillette on Friday and Buffalo on Saturday. Cody will also be competing in Buffalo on Saturday, and Scribner noted that the race to watch would be in the 200 Free as Gross will match up for the first time against Tara Joyce, who currently holds the fastest time in 3A for that event, besting Gross’ season best by a little over two seconds.
“Hannah is really wanting to have a person to swim against who will push her in the 200,” Scribner nodded. “She is really excited to have the chance to race Tara and I know it will be an exciting race to watch.”