Swimmers have mid-season fun

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The Lady Dogie Swim team got to mix things up last Friday in Buffalo, as the two teams combined for a fun day of competition. Newcastle head coach Doug Scribner and Buffalo head coach Ron Chapin divided the swimmers into evenly and competitively matched teams to compete against each other in some pretty unique relay races.
“After the individual events, we split the girls up into two teams for the relays,” Scribner explained. “Ron and his team sat on one side of the pool while my team and I sat on the other, and I think the girls had a lot of fun,”
Given the nature of the relays and the fact that they were made up of members of each school, they were not scored for team points. However, that didn’t mean the swimmers took them any less seriously.
Rather than racing the usual three events, on Friday the ladies swam a sweatshirt relay, a mixed up relay and a
football relay.
For the sweatshirt relay, each team was given one sweatshirt that was required attire for each swimmer to wear while racing a 50 Free lap. In order to hand off to the next member of the relay, the swimmer would have to get out of the pool, take off the sweatshirt, and then the next swimmer would have to put it on before diving in to complete her lap.
“The girls had a really good strategy for exchanging the sweatshirt,” Scribner chuckled. “They would hold hands and put their heads together, then the other two team members would grab the waist of the sweatshirt and pull it up over the head of the one wearing it and slip it on the next one. It made that go really fast.”
The Mixed Up relay consisted of the elementary backstroke (like a breaststroke on your back), the sidestroke, a backwards butterfly and a corkscrew where the swimmer transitions from a front crawl to a backstroke continuously for 50 yards.
Finally, the football relay required the swimmer to carry a football without losing it while swimming a 50 Free. 
“In the football relay, the people that won swam holding the ball with their legs so their arms were free,” Scribner explained. “The girls really enjoyed swimming those relays and having the teams mixed up for the day.” 
The meet wasn’t all fun and games, however, and though there were no new qualifiers, a couple of Lady Dogies saw some good improvements in times.
Rayleigh Ship cut six seconds in her 200 IM, while Moriahn Kenney shaved three seconds off her time in the 100 Backstroke.
“For the most part, everyone swam well and were on their best times,” Scribner nodded. “We’ve had two pretty hard weeks of practice and the girls are tired, so given that, I was pretty happy with how they did.”
Only two of the four divers competed on the day. A requirement for the meet was that each had to do reverse dives this week. Dakottah Wheeler executed hers, and though Kyah Miller missed hers, according to Scribner she still dove well.
Unfortunately, Becca Henkle who was expected to put up a state qualifying number on Friday, was sick so did not compete. However, she was back in the pool on Monday and Autumn Mills, who has been drydocked since early in the season, is expected to return to the pool this week as well.
This Friday, the squad will head to Sheridan which Scribner noted looks to present some pretty good competition for the team. 
“Hannah [Gross] is excited because Sheridan, Campbell County. and Thunder Basin have some of the toughest girls in 4A so she’s looking forward to competing there,” he nodded. “It’s a quad, but it will be a big meet with those teams.”
The team will be back on the road Saturday for an invitational in Douglas, and Scribner is hopeful that all nine girls will be able to compete.