Swimmers defeat Outlaws

The Lady Dogie swim team headed back to Douglas for the second consecutive week to compete in the Lady Bearcat invitational Saturday. Despite not putting up as big of time drops as they did the week before, head coach Doug Scribner and his crew left Douglas with a couple impressive accolades.

As a team, the Lady Dogies defeated the Lady Outlaws by three points. That finish was notable. given that this was the first time in Scribner’s tenure that the girls have defeated the Carbon County squad.

“It felt pretty good to get that win,” Scribner said.

Overall, Scribner admitted that the individual improvements on Saturday were pretty modest. He attributed that to the fact that his girls had a tough week of practice with five full days.

Personal best times were put up by three swimmers in the 50 Freestyle, where Allie Lunstra and Sara Huey each cut half a second off their previous best and Madalyn Francis took .08 of a second off her best time.

“I was so excited to see Allie’s and Madalyn’s time in the 50 Free!” said senior captain Hailey Beastrom. “Allie’s time converts to a little over 27 seconds (from meters to yards) and Madalyn did it in just over 29 seconds. That is really exciting for our 200 Free Relay potential!”

Shelby Smith was the exception to the rule of modest improvements, given she had great time drops in the 200 and 400 Freestyle open races. The freshman carved 2:39 off her two-free time and 7:16 off her four-free time.

Scribner noted that the second most exciting race of the day was Smith’s in the open 200 Freestyle. Smith was swimming against another athlete who was coming into the race with a significantly faster time than Smith had.

“Our strategy was to stay at her feet, and not panic,”  Scribner said. “Her first 100 was pretty smooth and then she stayed strong, inched up on the girl, and she ended up beating her!”

Smith’s performance in the 200 gave her confidence, which she drew on for the 400 Freestyle Relay where she swam her leg strong and smooth as well.

According to Scribner, the highlight race of the day was that 400 Freestyle Relay manned by Lunstra, Smith, Ruth Rose and Jaydenn Nelson.

“Allie led off and put us in a good position with a little bit of a lead, and then in the second and third legs we fell a little behind,” Scribner said. “Then Jaydenn swam the best split of the relay and caught us back up to beat the inside lanes.”

This week the team will travel to Buffalo for a triangular on Friday, then will be back in the Bison pool on Saturday for an invitational where they will see a couple of new teams in Sheridan and Natrona County.