Indians take second against area swim teams

Each year dur­ing the last week of Jan­u­ary, the Mount Gilead swim team faces off against the high school teams from the Mar­ion County area.

In addi­tion to the Indi­ans, this year’s meet fea­tured Mar­ion Pleas­ant, Mar­ion Hard­ing, River Val­ley, Ridgedale and North Union. In the weeks head­ing up to this yearly event, coach Brad Snow plans his strat­egy care­fully — try­ing to pre­dict what events his rival coaches will choose for their best swim­mers and plac­ing his own swim­mers in events that will most likely score valu­able points for the Indians.

“Early on in my career, I was the only coach to have a strong men’s team and couldn’t rely on a lot of con­tri­bu­tion from the wome,” said Snow. “Over the years, the bal­ance has shifted as many of my sea­soned male swim­mers grad­u­ated and the women’s team grew stronger. This year, I knew I had to rely almost entirely on the women to pull off a victory.”

Adding ‘insult to injury’ was the fact that Jesse Rhode­beck, who was seeded first in his indi­vid­ual events and a strong mem­ber of two relays, had to miss the meet due to strep throat.

The energy was high in the nata­to­rium at the Mar­ion Y as friends and fam­ily gath­ered to cheer on the local swimmers.

“It is always a boost for us also to have so many high school stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff come to cheer — espe­cially if they have never been to a meet before,” said Snow. “We had a lot of pep talks and team cheers to get us hyped up for this meet — the swim­mers knew exactly what they needed to do to be suc­cess­ful, so we were excited but maybe a lit­tle ner­vous, too.”

Right out of the gate, the team suf­fered a blow as the girls’ B med­ley relay was dis­qual­i­fied for a false start.

“I started to sweat a lit­tle,” said Snow, “Relay points are higher than indi­vid­ual events, and the loss of those 18 points could make a huge difference.”

After the waves set­tled at the end of the day, it turned out that the Mt. Gilead girls defeated Pleas­ant by a score of 354 to 328.

Mar­ion Harding’s boys came out on top, with Pleas­ant plac­ing sec­ond and Mount Gilead third. With the scores com­bined, Mount Gilead placed sec­ond overall.

“While I would love to claim the top com­bined score, I am very excited that our girls defeated Pleas­ant,” said Snow. “This has never hap­pened, and we can be very proud! Every par­ent should also know that every one of the swim­mers scored, and that depth is what made the night happen.”

One of the most excit­ing events of the night was the girls’ 100 breast­stroke. Kara Gross­man went head to head with Pleasant’s Lin­sie Zhang, who swims year-round with the Mar­ion Y team as well.

Accord­ing to Snow, “the whole race was very close. You could hardly hear your­self over the cheer­ing. Kara ended up scor­ing first and set a new school record of 1.15.56!”

The 200 med­ley relay of Elly Herr, Gross­man, Bri­anna Snow and Jenny Hub­schman also set a new record of 2.12.08 and low­ered the 200 free relay record to 1.59.83. “We had been wait­ing all sea­son to see that sub 2:00 time!” said Snow.

Gross­man also fin­ished first in the 50 free, and David Kam­yar was vic­to­ri­ous in the 100 breast­stroke. Fin­ish­ing in the top three were Elly Herr –200 IM and 500 free, Bri­anna Snow –200 free and 100 fly, and Zach Helman-100 fly.

Many swim­mers also achieved per­sonal bests in indi­vid­ual events, includ­ing Bri­anna Snow, Kyle Lan­des, Aaron Evans, Erika Stevens, Savan­nah Chris­t­ian, Zach Hel­man, Jade Trim­mer, Julia Mar­shall, Nick Treisch, Court­ney West, Lexie Hin­kle, Kendrea Ward, Gen­e­sis Rocks, Andrew McFar­land, Tay­lor Clark and Cameron Brown.

“Another big moment was watch­ing Jacob Barn­hart shave 25 sec­onds off his 500 free!” reported Snow, and Haley Barn­hart also added points in her 500 free.

The swim team will fin­ish up their sea­son at the Cen­tral Dis­trict sec­tional meet at Colum­bus Acad­emy on Feb. 9, with a good chance of advanc­ing sev­eral relays and pos­si­bly some indi­vid­ual swim­mers to the Dis­trict meet at the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity on Feb.15.

The team also boarded the bus and headed to Ohio North­ern Uni­ver­sity in Ada to com­pete in a dou­ble dual meet with Ada High School and Cold­wa­ter High School recently.

The Mount Gilead men were vic­to­ri­ous over Cold­wa­ter 44 to 42 and fell to Ada 57 to 34. The Mount Gilead women were too pow­er­ful for both of their oppo­nents. The women scored 64 to Coldwater’s 27 and 53 to Ada’s 40.

There were a num­ber of high­lights at the meet. The 200 freestyle relay of Jenny Hub­schman, Bri­anna Snow, Elly Herr, and Kara Gross­man set a new school record – bet­ter­ing their own record time.

Herr had a very impres­sive day as she passed Eliz­a­beth Ray to become the sec­ond fastest 500 freestyler in school his­tory. She was three sec­onds off of the record held by Brae­lyn Snow. Herr also swam the sec­ond fastest time in school his­tory in the 200 indi­vid­ual med­ley. Gross­man low­ered her sprint time and had the third fastest 50 yard freestyle in school history.

First place fin­ish­ers were: Herr, Gross­man, Snow, Hub­schman, Lexie Hin­kle, Kyle Lan­des, Zack Hel­man, Nick Treisch, and Jesse Rhodebeck.

Also scor­ing for the Indi­ans were: Court­ney West, Erika Stevens, Kendrea Ward, Jacob Barn­hart, Cameron Brown, Aaron Evans, Tay­lor Clark, Andrew McFar­land, Savanah Chris­t­ian, and Julia Marshall.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Feb 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.