C/A swim hosts conference meet, takes third overall
By Nathaniel Underwood
The Colby/Abbotsford swim team earned a top-six podium finish in nine of the 11 events at the Great Northern Conference meet held last Friday at the Colby pool. They maintained their position in the conference standings, taking third in the meet with 173 points to finish third overall in the GNC. Rhinelander won the meet with 415 points and Medford took second with 267.5 points.
The 200-yard freestyle relay team of Madisyn Schraufnagel, Jordan Jakel, Brezlyn Boyer and Chloe Cihlar earned themselves second-team all-conference honors on Friday night for their performance in the race. Only Rhinelander’s relay of Ella Heck, Camilla Gruett, Lily Thorsen and Vivian Lamers were faster than the Colby/Abby squad, who just edged out the Antigo relay of Holland Tainter, Allyssa Jansen, Eleanor Tassler and Chloe Tainter. It went right down to the wire, but Cihlar was able to hold off a comeback attempt from Tainter as the co-op relay finished three-tenths of a second ahead of the third-place Antigo squad, ending with a time of 1:48.57.
The second place finish was Colby/Abby’s best of the evening. The same team of Schraufnagel, Jakel, Boyer and Cihlar also took fourth in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 2:00.92 and all four swimmers had top-six finishes as individuals.
Schraufnagel and Boyer both picked up fourth place finishes, the best individual finishes for the co-op at the conference meet. Schraufnagel nearly broke up a trio of Rhinelander swimmers at the top of the 200yard IM standings but the Hodag’s Ellyse Younker used a strong finish in the final 50yard freestyle to make up ground on the Colby/ Abby junior. Schraufnagel finished just a tenth of a second behind Younker, earning fourth place with a time of 2:23.17.
Boyer’s fourth place finish came in the 100-yard breaststroke, where she beat her seed time by over a second to finish with a time of 1:18.28. It was the only individual event that Colby/Abby finished with two swimmers in the top six, as Jakel also took a few tenths of a second off her seed time to narrowly best Lakeland’s Daryn Smolinski, grabbing fifth by seven-hundredths of a second with a time of 1:21.69.
Boyer and Schraufnagel also grabbed fifth place finishes. Boyer defeated Lakeland’s Avalon Collins by six-tenths of a second for her spot in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 1:00.80 and picked up her fifth place in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 1:05.04. Jakel was edged out of another fifth place finish by Medford’s Layla Petersen in the 100yard butterfly. Jakel’s time of 1:08.40 was just a tenth of a second off the pace of Petersen, but the Colby/Abby junior still earned a podium spot with her sixth place finish.
Cihlar had the final individual top-six finish for the co-op, earning sixth in the 500yard freestyle with a time of 6:05.73. She was also part of the 400-yard freestyle relay team that included McKinley Meyer, Hazel Flink and Ella Baumann, which took sixth with a time of 4:21.68.
Baumann was a few tenths of a second away from adding yet another sixth place finish for Colby/Abby as she cut over four seconds off her seed time in the 200-yard freestyle to place seventh with a time of 2:21.19.
As the Colby/Abby swim team closes the book on the regular season, they set their sights on the sectional meet to be held in Menomonie on Saturday, Nov. 9. There, they will look to send at least one swimmer to the state meet for the third straight season, though the competition will continue to be tough. Rhinelander, Medford and the rest of the GNC squads will also be reporting to Menomonie for the sectional meet, as will a handful of schools outside the conference that will add a bit of an unknown to the proceedings. The meet will begin at 1 p.m.
MAKING WAVES - Madisyn Schraufnagel completes the backstroke portion of the 200-IM at the conference meet in Colby last Friday. She took fourth in the event.
STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD
