MG swimmers finish season strongly

The Mount Gilead sum­mer swim team ended the sea­son in a burst of activ­ity with a win over Galion, a first place fin­ish at the Shelby/Galion/Mt. Gilead tri-meet and a sec­ond place tro­phy at the TCAL League Championships.

“Mount Gilead’s suc­cesses in recent years really under­scores the mean­ing of team effort,” said coach Dina Snow. “We have a lot of new swim­mers and most of our team only swims the very short sum­mer sea­son. We go into most of our meets know­ing that the other team might get the first place fin­ishes in some of the indi­vid­ual events, but we have the num­bers to have relays and be well-represented in most of the events. This is why I get a lit­tle crazy if swim­mers don’t show or choose not to par­tic­i­pate in some of our meets. Every sin­gle swim­mer plays a role.”

One of the high­lights of the Galion meet was a new team record in the 100 breast­stroke set by Kara Gross­man. “I was so excited for Kara! She has been work­ing hard all sum­mer and since she was going to be away for our last two meets, this was her big chance, “ accord­ing to Snow. “ She dug in and got the job done!”

The team was also proud of seven-year old Wes­ley Bush for com­pet­ing in his first swim meet, and also of Lewis Mesaros, who needed to par­tic­i­pate in a sport to earn a badge for Boy Scouts. After a few short weeks of instruc­tion from Sean Miranda and Robin Con­rad, Lewis suc­cess­fully com­pleted a 50 free in the meet.

“As we headed into the Shelby/Galion meet last Wednes­day, I wasn’t sure about the out­come. The scor­ing is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, and both teams have some fast swim­mers. Again, our depth and abil­ity to fill in most of the events led to another vic­tory,” said Snow.

Scor­ing first place points in relays were Rachel Koller, Cas­san­dra Snopik, Kylie Irwin, Ava Grif­fin, Tyler Knight, Sammy West, Isa­iah Fisher, Joel Con­rad, Casey Con­rad, Daniel Free­man, Logan Con­rad, Kaleb Fisher, Elly Herr, Sarah Hub­schman, Erin Zmuda, Bri­anna Snow, David Kam­yar, Jacob Barn­hart, Justin Fran­cis, Nick Gould, and Court­ney West.

Indi­vid­ual first place fin­ishes were earned by Isa­iah Fisher, Logan Con­rad, Grace Mow­ery, Joel Con­rad, Erin Zmuda, Bri­anna Snow, Daniel Free­man, Rachel Koller, Casey Con­rad, Justin Fran­cis, Cas­san­dra Snopik, Sarah Hub­schman, and David Kamyar.

The final meet of the year was the TCAL league cham­pi­onship, hosted by Colonel Craw­ford, who also won the five-team meet. Mount Gilead pulled together and brought home the sec­ond place trophy.

“I wasn’t sure if we would pull it off again this year, “ said Snow. “Right off the bat, we had three relays get dis­qual­i­fied for var­i­ous rea­sons, and those relays are our bread and but­ter. For­tu­nately, we held it together and won that trophy.”

High­lights of the meet included the gold-medal win­ning 9–10 boys med­ley relay (Mason Faux, Tyler Knight, Isa­iah Fisher and Joel Conrad).

“That race was so excit­ing! The whole place was cheer­ing like mad!” said Snow.

As for scor­ing, most of the team brought in points. Relay medal win­ners included the boys 13–14 med­ley and free relays (Logan Con­rad, Daniel Free­man, Evan Zmuda, Casey Con­rad), the girls 15–18 med­ley relay (Jenny Hub­schman, Sarah Hub­schman, Erin Zmuda, Bri­anna Snow), the boys 9–10 free relay (Fisher, Knight, Faux and Con­rad), the 11–12 boys free relay (Kaleb Fisher, Noah Huf­fer, Spencer Faux and Dustin Fer­rell), the 15–18 girls free relay (Zmuda, Snow, Herr, Court­ney West) and the 15–18 boys free relay (David Hawk, Justin Fran­cis, David Kam­yar and Nick Gould).

Indi­vid­ual medal win­ners included Isa­iah Fisher, Evan Zmuda, Logan Con­rad, Joel Con­rad, Mason Faux, David Hawk, Erin Zmuda, Bri­anna Snow, Elly Herr, Justin Fran­cis and Tyler Knight. David Hawk also set the team records in the 50 yard and 100 yard freestyle.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jul 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.