.JPG) |
| SECTIONAL CHAMPIONS, NEW YHS RECORD! |
The badly outmanned #21 Tigers from Yorktown dazzled their fans with championship caliber swims, winning FOUR swimming events (three MORE than team runner-up Hamilton Southeastern), and just two fewer than team champion Fishers). In fact, throw in the close second place finishes in the 50 Free and the 200 Free Relay, and the Golden Girls of YHS came within a combined .65 of a second of winning SIX of the meet's eleven swimming events on Saturday! That's truly outstanding for a school with a fraction of the student bodies and rosters of the two behemoths from Hamilton County.
The 200 Medley Relay team of senior Larah Beaver, juniors Jessica Extine and Caroline Grasso, and freshman Lauren Elston made a bold, loud statement right out of the blocks on Saturday. They electrified the crowd with a come-from-behind victory in the day's first event, sizzling the water with a 1:47.13! That time is nearly three seconds FASTER than the previous YHS record (that Beaver, Extine and Grasso had shared along with Kersea Gable). It is well under the ALL-AMERICAN consideration time, and it seeds these girls 7th of the 32 teams heading to the State Meet this weekend. I believe these girls are capable of swimming even FASTER at the 'Nat. If they can get down to the AUTOMATIC ALL-AMERICAN cut of 1:46.68, they'll very likely stand far up on the medal stand Saturday afternoon.
Those same four girls will swim several other events at the State Meet. Beaver's Sectional championships in the 100 Free (52.60) and 100 Back (56.75) send her to Indy for the fourth-straight year. Extine won her second career individual Sectional championship, gambling in a switch from last year's 100 Fly to this year's 100 Breast. The coin flip paid big dividends, with Extine besting the breast field in 1:07.84. Jess got caught between strokes on a couple of her turns at the Sectional. If she nails those transitions more tightly this weekend, she's likely to drop even more time Friday and Saturday.
Extine's runner-up time in the 50 Free (24.11) was faster than the IHSAA state cut, so she'll get a chance to redeem herself in the sprint on Friday and Saturday. There's no doubt in my mind that Jess is fast enough to swim her way onto the medal stand. Grasso's third place finish in the 100 Back (59.02) was just .21 off the state cut, but plenty fast enough to earn her a berth in the State Meet for the second year in-a-row. Caroline is more than capable of advancing to Saturday and scoring more critical points for YHS.
But the sleeper in the whole bunch may be Yorktown's 200 Free Relay team. The quartet of Beaver, Grasso, Elston and Extine was "only" the runner-up at the Fishers Sectional. But their time of 1:37.42 included split times for Beaver and Grasso that were well off their bests. I am convinced that if the coaches and athletes have nailed this taper, these girls will break the YHS record of 1:36.36 next weekend. That would surpass the AUTOMATIC ALL-AMERICAN cut by more than a half-second, and likely lead to a Top 4 finish that would also put them on the ALL-STATE team!
This group of girls has a chance to post Yorktown's best finish in the State Meet team standings since the 2006 Tigers were the State Runners-up. They'll put it all on the line in the prelims on Friday night--the Top 16 finishers in each event return on Saturday, with the Top 8 competing in the finals for the title of State Champion and the medals on Saturday.
Let's do everything we can as parents, fans, and athletes this week to support the State Team, and put the name YORKTOWN back where it belongs on Indiana's biggest stage. In a nutshell, it's Mission SWIM-possible.
Courage...NO limits...BELIEVE!
GO TIGERS!!
No comments:
Post a Comment