BEAVER 5TH, TIGERS 22ND AT STATE MEET

          Yorktown's Larah Beaver, 5th in Indiana in the 100 Back!

Four Saturday swims, three scoring performances, and one trip to the medal stand--that sums up the Yorktown Tigers' weekend at the IHSAA State Meet.  The 21st ranked Lady Tigers scored 19 points to share 22nd place with Franklin High School in their final meet of the 2011-12 season.  Carmel claimed its 26th-straight team state championship in what is slightly less anti-clamactic than where the sun will rise in the morning.

YHS senior Larah Beaver closed out a spectacular high school career, swimming her way onto the awards podium for the second-straight year.  The Ball State swimming signee went 56.39 in the championship heat of the 100 Back to finish 5th and claim 14 points for Yorktown.  Beaver's time was just off her school record and the automatic All-American cut in that event.  It's close enough that Larah will likely earn the 4th All-American honor of her YHS career later this spring.

Beaver also claimed 1 point for the Tigers with a 16th place finish in the 100 Free (53.33).  In fact, Larah had a hand in all of the Tigers' points in the State Meet.

Juniors Caroline Grasso and Jessica Extine, and freshman Lauren Elston also got into the scoring act.  They joined Beaver on the 200 Free Relay team that placed 15th in 1:39.54, good for another 4 points for the green and white.

Unfortunately, that's where the scoring ended for Yorktown.  The girls never got untracked on Friday and Saturday--their times in both relays were significantly slower than they posted a week earlier at the Fishers Sectional.  Even so, the school record holding 200 Medley Relay team just missed a shot at a medal, finishing the Friday prelims one spot out of the running in 9th place with a 1:48.07.  Zionsville, ultimately the team State Runner-up, edged the Lady Tigers for that final trip to the medal round by just .45 of a second.  Indeed, EVERY stroke counts!

So do starts--the officials disqualified the Tigers' 200 Medley Relay team on Saturday, wiping out a 13th place finish on the scoreboard (1:48.84).  That time was enough to beat Carroll, Avon and Fishers between the lane lines, but the officials ruled that Grasso moved her head back just before the start tone.  You can watch the video of the race online at facebook.com/yorktown.swimming and decide for yourself whether that was a good call or not.  The decision erased 8 points that would have pushed Yorktown three spots higher in the team standings ahead of Western, Northridge and Franklin.

Grasso and Extine each took shots at advancing in their individual events, but neither could punch her ticket.  Grasso shook off the effects of an illness to post a sub-par 1:01.57 in Friday night's 100 Back prelims, which left her 28th in the standings.  Extine had a pair of chances to advance to Saturday's big dance--she managed a disappointing 24.69 in the preliminary round of the 50 Free to finish 23rd.  Jess came back later in the evening in the 100 Breast and swam a 1:08.25, again good for 23rd place.

It would be fair to say that Yorktown scored far fewer points that it could have, and in all honesty, probably SHOULD have.  I've been around these girls long enough to know that Grasso and Extine are NOT happy with how they swam--they are much FASTER swimmers than they showed.  They simply had bad days when they needed to have better.  And that's the key word--both of those young ladies is far BETTER, and I'm confident they'll use their experiences from Friday night and Saturday afternoon to do much better when the 2013 State Meet rolls around.

Where do we go from here?  Beaver leaves behind HUGE shoes to fill, but the return of the rest of the State Team is a sure sign of great things in the future.  Look for Extine, Elston, the Grasso sisters, Sexton, Gable, Windell and Keller to carry the ball into next season.

And look for MANY of them to return to the 'Nat a year from now.

GO TIGERS!