Girls Swim Team Dominate Relay Records at Invite

  The girls swim dive team had their annual Sheridan Invite the weekend of Sept. 23-24. On Friday, the first day of the invite, Kelly Walsh and Laramie competed against Sheridan, where the girls team broke the 400-meter relay record. On Saturday, Kelly Walsh and Laramie competed again but with the addition of Natrona. The girls broke two more records on Saturday: the 200-meter medley and the 200-meter freestyle relay, though the team still lost to Laramie by 11 points in the end.

  All three meter relay records were broken within the two days the meet was held. Juniors Molly Green, Pippin Robison, Sophomore Piper Carroll, and Freshman Zoe Robison broke all three relay records. The first record they broke was the 400 meter relay on Friday. They were extremely close to not making the cut, but Zoe Robison pulled through in the last leg of the race to beat the record by 0.61 seconds, last broken in 1999 by Tauna Watts, Stephanie Warnke, Lindsey Urbatchka, and Sarah Heine.

  On Saturday, Sept. 24, the girls broke the 200-meter medley relay. Green started the relay by swimming backstroke the first leg of the race. Zoe Robison dove in after Green to swim the breaststroke leg of the race. After Zoe Robison finished her leg, Pippin Robison jumped in to swim the third leg of the race swimming butterfly. Carroll swam the freestyle leg of the race finishing the relay with a time of 2:08.66. This beat the previous record by 1.78 seconds which was set back in 2013. In the 200-meter freestyle relay, the same four girls broke the previous record by 1.88 seconds setting the new record to 1:55.38, the same night as the medley. “It felt good to break the records,” said Carroll after breaking all three of the relay records.

  “Breaking the records was pretty awesome and are there to be broken,” said head coach Brent Moore.  While the records were quite an accomplishment the girls team met another big goal at their invite. The girls started a tradition this year in which they hammer nails into a special board they take with them to meets. Every time a girl sets a personal record or qualifies for state she hammer a nail in, but they only put one nail in per qualifying event. At the invite they had officially put in over 100 nails finally reaching a big goal for the team. The tradition started this year when the coaches brought the idea in from a conference for the team to try. “Getting over 100 nails in the board was awesome, and it’s nice that even girls who don’t qualify contribute to the board,” said Moore.