Swim co-op sets 22 PRs at conference meet
The Colby-Abby swim team competed in the Great Northern conference championship meet held in Tomahawk last Friday. The co-op walked out with fifth place as a team, scoring 130 points, which placed them just behind Tomahawk’s 135. It was an excellent meet for many of the co-op swimmers. There were 22 personal bests set on Friday and Chloe Cihlar captured a second-team all-conference honor. Madisyn Schraufnagel also received an honorable mention in one event.
Cihlar’s second-place finish in the 50yard freestyle was the co-op’s top placement at the conference meet. The event’s winner, Abishea Winnicki from Rhinelander, put some distance between herself and the rest of the pack, coming in with a time of 24.45. It was an extremely tight race behind her, however, with the second-place through sixth-place swimmers all finishing within five-tenths of a second behind the Hodag junior. Cihlar came out on top of that pack to claim her second-team all-conference honor. She just edged out Timmerman Saylor of Lakeland, finishing eight-hundredths of a second faster than her opponent with a time of 26.08.
Cihlar just missed out on the podium in her other individual event, the 100yard freestyle. She made up some ground during the second half of the race, passing Rhinelander’s Camilla Gruett, but couldn’t quite overcome Tomahawk’s Joanna Phillips for the third-place spot. Cihlar finished with a final time of 58.36.
Schraufnagel, meanwhile, was in a close race of her own in the 100-yard backstroke. Much like the 50-yard freestyle, the 100-yard backstroke saw its winner, Paige Dekiep of Tomahawk, take a comfortable lead, creating a race for second-place. Schraufnagel took third, her time of 1:05.30 just behind the Ladysmith co-op’s Madeline Bunton’s time of 1:04.83 and sneaking in ahead of Lakeland’s Saylor, who finished fourth with a time of 1:05.59. Her performance earned the Colby-Abby freshman an honorable mention.
She also had a solid finish in the 100yard butterfly, coming in fourth-place overall with a final time of 1:06.18.
Schraufnagel and Cihlar teamed up with Lilly Graun and Jordan Jakel for the co-op’s final top four finish. The quartet competed in two relays, finishing with a time of 1:53.70 in the 200-yard freestyle. They staved off Rhinelander’s second team to place fourth out of 14 teams in the event. They also competed in the 200-yard medley relay, taking sixth place with a time of 2:04.62.
Other top performances came from Jakel in the 200-yard IM, where she finished in sixth place with a time of 2:35.86, and in the 500-yard freestyle, where she placed seventh with a time of 6:34.80. Hailey Meyer also took eighth in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2:32.70.
The team will be competing next in the Division 2 sectional held in Merrill. The meet will be held on Saturday, November 5, with a start time of 10:00 a.m. There will be plenty of familiar faces, with all eight of the teams that competed in the Great Northern conference meet set to make an appearance at the sectional.
