Mount Gilead swimmers host invitational

The nata­to­rium at the Mar­ion Fam­ily YMCA was bustling with activ­ity as Mount Gilead hosted a Small Schools Invi­ta­tional on Wed., Dec. 19.

In addi­tion to the host team, ten other schools were rep­re­sented: Ada, Amanda-Clearcreek, Crest­line, Elgin, Lima, Mans­field Chris­t­ian, Mar­ion Pleas­ant, North­ridge, North Union, Ridgedale and River Valley.

“The pur­pose of this meet was to allow smaller Divi­sion II schools to have decent com­pe­ti­tion and have fun at the same time,” accord­ing to MG coach Brad Snow. “Many of us are in the same boat of rebuild­ing pro­grams or try­ing to do our best with lim­ited facil­i­ties. This was a great meet, and we owe a lot of thanks to Evan Shan­ley of the Mar­ion Y for work­ing out so many of the logistics.”

After the waves set­tled, the Mount Gilead women came in sec­ond only to Mar­ion Pleas­ant with a score of 247.5 to 230. While the men placed fifth of nine teams, the com­bined score was enough to earn Mount Gilead third place out of 11 teams.

“Pleas­ant is our biggest area rival, so it always a moti­va­tor to see how we stack up against them. At the same time, we get along well and cheer for each oth­ers’ swim­mers,” said Snow. “Ada High School also had some really fast men, so I am very pleased at how well we fin­ished — again, due to the depth of swim­mers and the abil­ity to fill events. A high­light of the night was Kara Gross­man break­ing her own school record in the 100 breast­stroke with a time of 1:16.85.”

Grossman’s time in the 50 free was also fast enough to place her in the top three in Mt. Gilead his­tory, dis­plac­ing the time held by Julie Gor­don since the 1990s.

Mount Gilead swim­mers fin­ish­ing in the top three were: Jesse Rhode­beck, first in the 100 back; Kara Gross­man, sec­ond in the 100 breast and third in the 50 free; Elly Herr, third in the 200 free; the women’s 200 med­ley relay (Elly Herr, Kara Gross­man, Bri­anna Snow and Jenny Hub­schman) — sec­ond place, and the women’s 200 free relay (Hub­schman, Herr, Snow and Gross­man) — third place. These swim­mers also added addi­tional points in other events as well.

“As I’ve men­tioned fre­quently, every swim­mer counts, and I believe the whole team con­tributed points to our effort this evening,” said Snow.

Adding to the team totals with efforts in both relays and indi­vid­ual events for the men were Jacob Barn­hart, David Kam­yar, Zach Hel­man, Nick Treisch, Cameron Brown, Kyle Lan­des and Andrew McFar­land. Scor­ing for the women were Lexie Hin­kle, Tay­lor Clark, Kendra Ward, Erika Stevens, Court­ney West, Haley Barn­hart, Gen­e­sis Rocks, Jade Trim­mer, Savanah Chris­t­ian and Julia Marshall.

“Our meets will resume in 2013, but our biggest chal­lenge is how to keep in shape over the Christ­mas break. With the hol­i­days falling dur­ing the week and no local pool, we are at a real dis­ad­van­tage,” said Snow.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jan 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.