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While there is some familiar Wildcat faces journeying down to the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center this weekend for the Minnesota State Swimming and Diving Tournament, they will be accompanied by some new blood, as well as a diver making her long-awaited return.

The familiar faces are Brogan Lee and Alex Thomsen. Lee qualified last year in the 200-yard freestyle and the 500-yard freestyle. She ended up in fifth place in the 500 as a sophomore, and now as a junior, she enters the tournament as the second seed in the field. The state champion from last year, Marissa Wood, of Sartell-St. Stephen, returns, though, to defend her crown. She is the lone swimmer that is seeded above Lee, albeit it by only three seconds.

In the 200 this year, Lee enters the field as the fifth seed in the event, and barring any disasters, that sets her up for what could possibly be Chisago Lakes' first ever double medalist at the state tournament.

Head Coach Ed Wakefield said that he was worried Brogan would struggle in the 500 after staying so close with Monticello's Ashley Drazkowski for the whole 200-yard freestyle. Lee finished just 1.2 seconds behind Drazkowski in the 200. However, Drazkowski actually swam faster than Lee in the 500 in the preliminaries

Lee didn't show any ill-effects, though, when the two went head-to-head again in the 500 finals. With the two girls going stroke for stroke up until the 150-yard mark, Lee turned it up a notch and really began to pull away before the race was even half over. "I was worried that she was just trying to get a quick lead over Drazkowski, and that she'd burn out by the end of the race," Wakefield explained. "That, or she was going to keep it up and have a great swim."

Thankfully for Lee, it was the latter. She kept up her torrid pace for the whole 500 yards and finished in 5:12, 10 seconds faster than Drazkowski, who finished in 5:22 in second place.

Alex Thomsen is the other familiar face returning to the meet this year. Although she finished seventh in the state in diving last year, it wasn't even a sure thing that Thomsen was going to qualify for the state tournament this year.

Sauk Rapids-Rice, who sent three girls to the state meet last year, entered the Wildcats section this year, and that trio of divers were all back. With only the top four divers moving on to the state tournament, things were going to be challenging.

Heading into the section finals, Thomsen was just barely hanging on to fourth place behind the three Sauk Rapids girls. Cassie Schlegel and Lindsay Carlson had outside shots at moving up with great dives in eighth and ninth place, respectively.

Diving coach Lisa Willhite saves each girl's best dives until the end, and that strategy paid off two-fold at the section meet. Thomsen nailed her last dive to propel her up to third place, and that made just enough room for Carlson, who had stuck her last dive perfectly to sneak from ninth place into fourth place and earn a state tournament bid. "I just told her to unleash the beast," Willhite said of Carlson's last ditch effort.

Carlson will be making her second trip to the state meet, but she took an odd route to this second trip. As an eighth grader, Carlson qualified for the meet and was just another diver among the older girls. With four years of eligibility left, however, it was a given that she'd be back to the tournament, and maybe even at the top of it at the end of her career.

Carlson, now a junior, took the last two years off as she excelled at club gymnastics, winning titles all over the Midwest. But, this year, she returned to the pool and barely missed a beat.

It almost didn't happen, though. She struggled in the second rounds of dives and after seeing all the scores posted going into the finals, Carlson figured she was going to have to wait until next year to get another crack at the tournament.

Willhite told her that if she really hit her last dives, though, that she could sneak in. Sure enough, in the finals, Carlson scored nearly 107 points while Danika Leavitt, the Sauk Rapids girls who she overtook to go to the tournament, scored only 76 points.

"We knew with Sauk Rapids in the section this year that it wasn't even a given that we'd get Alex to the state meet," Willhite said. "But to get Alex and Lindsay there is awesome."

The two debuting swimmers are Thomi Lee, Brogan's younger sister, and Heidi Willhite, Lisa's daughter.

Thomi, who is the first eighth grader to ever qualify for the state meet in swimming for the Wildcats, got in with a huge improvement on her 500-yard freestyle time. Up until the section meet, her season best had been around 5:37, and in the section finals, she blew up for a 5:25, putting her in third place behind Brogan and Drazkowski. She leapfrogged two competitors who had the inside track on her after the preliminary races.

Willhite, a junior, actually qualified in two events after just barely missing out on the two last year. She first qualified in the 50-yard freestyle in the preliminaries. Her 25.20 was good enough to make the state cut, and then she went on to finish in second in the finals.

In the 100-yard freestyle, she managed to swim two qualifying times, one each in the preliminaries and the finals.

In both events, she finished second overall, but it was to Monticello junior Amanda Paulson, who is one of the better Class A sprinters in the state.

The Wildcats didn't escape without suffering some heartache, though. The 200-yard freestyle relay team had a nice shot at going to state as the team of Willhite, Brogan Lee, Thomi Lee and Hanna Lee were in second place almost all race. However, Sauk Rapids' anchor swimmer out-touched the Wildcats by .09 seconds. And to make matters worse, the 'Cats missed the state cut by .03 seconds. Although it would've only sent one extra girl, Hanna Lee, to the meet to compete, four alternates come along for relays, so in reality, five more girls could've traveled to the state meet with the chance to compete.

As a team, the girls finished third with 296 points. Monticello won the meet with 461 points and Big Lake came in second place with 325 points.

At the end of the section, Thomsen was named the Section's Outstanding Diver and Wakefield was named the Section's Outstanding Coach.

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