M’s swim strong among state’s top teams

• Homer finishes 8th overall in field of 21 swim squads

by Aaron Selbig
Homer Tribune

It was a busy weekend full of tough competition for the Homer swim team. The Mariners took on two of the fastest teams in the state in a tri-meet Oct. 2, before heading to the huge Bartlett Invitational meet – featuring teams from 21 different schools – the next day.
On Friday, several Mariners turned in quality times against Anchorage’s Dimond and East High Schools, with the girls’ 200-yard freestyle relay team placing second with a time of one minute, 51.61 seconds. The Homer boys, meanwhile, finished second in the 200-yard individual medley relay with a time of 1:55.78.
“That was just a really hard meet,” said Homer Head Coach Anna Borland-Ivy. “It did give our more inexperienced swimmers an opportunity to swim, though. And it got our kids fired up for the next day.”
At the Bartlett Invite, Homer finished a respectable eighth in the overall combined team standings, with the girls taking eighth place and the boys finishing ninth.
Marie Schmidt led the Mariner girls with an impressive second-place swim in the 500-yard freestyle, and also came in seventh in the 200-yard freestyle.
For the Homer boys, Alder Fletcher finished 10th in the ultra-competitive 50-yard freestyle, while Kyle Wentz took 2.5 seconds off his personal best time with a 16th-place finish in the 100-yard freestyle.
“There were some really good swims there among all the great teams in the state,” said Borland-Ivy. “We did pretty well with our tiny little team. I was pretty happy with it.”
The Mariners next travel to the Seward Invitational this weekend and the Valley Invitational in Palmer the following weekend before returning home to host the Borough Invitational Oct. 23 and 24.

Contact the writer
Posted by Newsroom on Oct 7th, 2009 and filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.