Two more qualify at home

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
 
The Dogie swimmers remained perfect on the year, adding new qualifying events in each weekend of competition. They stayed true to form at their only home meet of the season Thursday as Robert Humes and Ramsey Gross each added a new option to their state slate.
Humes punched his ticket in the 100 Freestyle just a week after getting under the mark in the 50 Free, while Gross added the 50 Free to go along with the 200 IM and 100 Backstroke he qualified for two weeks ago. 
“Robert had a great race in the 100 Free and took off two and a half seconds,” head coach Doug Scribner said. “I think that qualifying in the 50 Free last week in Douglas really took the pressure off of him, and he just went out and swam it.” 
It was also the first time that the Dogies have competed against Buffalo this year. The Bison have many swimmers who are fast swimming freestyle, and Humes was in a heat with several of them. He competed against them and as a result swam a 57.89 second race, finishing fourth but also nearly a second under qualifying time in the event. 
“We switched the order of the lanes, so he was looking at the results from a different lane. He was pretty disappointed with that finish, but their entire team can swim it under a minute,” Scribner began. “I had to tell him that he went under 58 seconds and that he did keep up with the Buffalo swimmers. After he realized he qualified, he was pretty excited.”
Gross finished first in the 50 Free with a personal record of 24.56 seconds, and he also swam a PR in the 100 Backstroke shaving off 1.7 seconds from his previous best time, and touched the wall first in that event as well.  
“The 50 is something Ramsey has wanted to qualify for and this was his first time swimming it, and I think he even surprised himself,” Scribner said. “His time cut in the backstroke is mostly due to technique things he’s been working on. He surprised himself again, but the improvement in technique and the fact that he went out and attacked it aggressively was why he had the time drop and the PR there.”
As a team, the Dogies had swimmers put up personal bests in all but one event. In addition to Gross, Zade Orsborn dropped 1.2 seconds for a PR in the 200 IM, which he had already qualified for earlier in the season, and though he didn’t hit his best time in the Butterfly, he did drop .35 seconds from his best so far this season in that event. 
“I think his time in the fly is just about two seconds off of what he swam last season,” Scribner reasoned. “It looked quite a bit better than it did last week, but we’ve spent about two weeks working on it pretty consistently so it makes sense.”
Nate Strickland returned to competition after illness dry docked him for a couple of weeks.
Despite fighting back to health, he was able to swim two personal best times in the 50 Free and the 100 Free, dropping half a second in the former and 4.6 seconds in the latter. 
“Nate wasn’t sure if he was going to be strong enough to compete at the beginning of the week, but by Wednesday, he was feeling a lot better,” Scribner explained. “He was pretty happy with his times in his races and so was I.”
According to Scribner, his team is starting to build confidence which is vital as he anticipates that this year will be another fast state meet, just as it was last season. Those who have qualified still need to drop time in order to make it to the top 12 and be eligible to swim in the finals, however Scribner also has confidence that they will be able to achieve that goal.
After having a couple of swimmers out due to illness over the last couple of weeks, Scribner is hoping to have a full team back for Gillette this weekend. The pre-invite is on Friday, followed by the invitational meet on Saturday. The state meet is being held in Gillette this year, so Scribner anticipates this will be a pretty big meet and will also offer his team the opportunity to swim in the state meet pool.