2010-11 State Meet teamThe Yorktown High School girls will carry a bulls eye on their collective back to start the upcoming IHSAA swimming and diving season. The Lady Tigers (Tige-HERS?) have been ranked #15 in the state in the pre-season poll compiled by the members of the Indiana High School Swim Coaches Association. The poll is based on a mythical State Meet, scored from 1st to 16th, based on the best times of athletes returning for the 2011-12 season.
This year's edition of the Tigers is the most powerful since the Maggie Bird-Jill Lockhart-Kelsi Hall State Runner-up squad of 2005-06 that beat everyone except Carmel at the IU Natatorium that year. First-year YHS coach Laura Slight and her staff will begin practice in less than a month with THREE ranked individual swimmers, and at least two relays that are likely to dent the rankings later in the season.
Senior Larah Beaver, junior Jessica Extine, and junior Caroline Grasso all begin the season in the state's Top 16 in their respective specialties. Beaver is 6th in the 100-yard backstroke and 11th in the 100-yard freestyle; Extine is 8th in the 50-yard freestyle and 16th in the 100-yard butterfly; and Grasso is 16th in the 100-yard backstroke.
YHS made statewide noise in both the 200-yard medley relay and the 200-yard freestyle relay last season. Gabby LaVoie is the only member of last season's State Meet team who graduated from those quartets--the Tigers' proverbial gun will be LOADED if everyone else who swam then competes again in 2011-12!
Time to strap it on, train each day like a CHAMPION, and focus on Conference, Sectional and STATE when the first practice of the high school season begins on October 24th.
Only 27 days to go, girls.
GO TIGERS!
