With just eight boys on the swimming roster for Saturday’s Sunflower League meet, the Pioneers stood little chance of taking the team title. Although the highest finish for the meet was an 11th-place effort by the 400-yard freestyle relay, head coach Willis Willmeth said he was really pleased to see every member of the team improve their times.
“On the whole of the day I was real pleased with the kids,” Willmeth said. “I’m real proud of them.”
All eight boys recorded a personal best time at the meet, whether that be in an individual event or as part of a relay.
“When you go back and look at things you see we didn’t place and we didn’t do some of those things, but on the flip side we had 14 PRs. When it came down to it, they swam their ultimate best on that day. It’s a little disappointing to finish last overall, but I’m excited for the kids and how hard they’ve worked. Obviously we’d have liked to been a little faster, but when you take eight kids we’re not deep but all those kids PRed at some time (at the meet).”
The 400-yard freestyle relay team of Nick Robertson, Dylan Wendt, Mark Dabeck and Randy Harrison took 11th place overall after cutting eight seconds off their previous best time. The squad finished in 4 minutes 4.93 seconds in Saturday’s B pool finals.
“They worked really hard on that and they swam well,” Willmeth said of the relay.
The 200-yard freestyle relay of Robertson, Dabeck, Jacob Thomas and Harrison swam a personal record time of 1:49.08 at the league meet. The final Leavenworth relay, the 200-yard medley team of Robertson, Kaleb Lorg, Joe Dean and Thomas, was disqualified in Saturday’s finals.
Leavenworth swam in Friday’s preliminaries for individual events, but none of the athletes were able to break into finals. Lorg swam a personal-best time of 2:57.41 in the 200-yard individual medley on Friday, and Joe Dean used a time of 1:29.08 to set a new personal record in the 100-yard butterfly. Mason Holler and Thomas each swam the 100-yard freestyle and both set new personal records, Thomas in 1:07.50 and Holler in 1:22.41.
Harrison and Wendt each better their times in the 500-yard freestyle. Harrison’s new personal best time is 6:22.54 and Wendt’s PR is now 6:31.52. Wendt also PRed in the 100-yard backstroke in 1:18.58. Harrison (2:08.8) and Thomas (2:46.12) both swam the 200-yard freestyle but neither time was an improvement for the boys. Dabeck and Lorg both swam personal bests in the 100-yard breaststroke, Dabeck recording a 1:19.49 and Lorg setting his new PR at 1:22.82.
