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Section 4A Tournament

"What a fantastic day of swimming and time drops," Chisago Lakes swimming and diving Head Coach Mark Nordby raved after the Wildcats' section meet last week.

Although only five guys advanced to the state tournament, 26 of the 30 individual swimmers had personal bests. "They weren't just drops of a couple of tenths of seconds, either," Nordby said. "They were major drops."

Some of the highlights from the preliminaries included Ryan Smith advancing to the finals in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle. "Ryan had an off night, though," Nordby said. "He was the number one seed in both the events, but it just wasn't there for him. I think he was mentally thinking about being chased by all of the other swimmers and that can be an intimidating place to be."

Other than Smith's double qualification for the section finals, Eric Barnes qualified in the 200-yard freestyle, Avery Turman qualified in the 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard breaststroke, Alex Vitalis in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle, Mitch Gebauer in the 50-yard freestyle, and Sam Engel advanced in the 100-yard backstroke.

All three relay teams for the Wildcats were able to advance to the finals also.

"Our training was perfect. These guys trained hard all season in the pool and weight room and have confidence in their tapers," Nordby said. "It was a magical night of swimming for us. Every time the guys stepped up on the blocks and swam, nearly every swimmer blew their previous times to pieces."

In the section finals, the 200-yard medley relay team of Engel, Turman, Alex Vrudny and Konnor Doble had a season-best time of 1:51.62 and finished in 10th place.

In the 200 free, Barnes finished in 13th place with a 2:01.31 "For Barnesy to make finals was pretty outstanding for a freshman in only his second year," Nordby stated.

Smith tied his personal best time in the 200 free with a 1:55.04, but he finished in eighth. Vitalis earned a matching eighth place finish in the 50-yard freestyle.

The first state qualifier for the 'Cats was familiar face Smith. He earned a bid to state tourney in the 500 free last year, and it was expected that he'd do it again. He did it by setting a new school record with a 5:12.34. "Ryan had a great race. We analyzed the other swimmers and found that many seeded ahead of him took the prelims out way to fast and then died off," Nordby explained. "The plan was for Ryan to go out a bit slower and then start picking off the guys ahead of him who were slowing down."

The plan worked to perfection, as Smith looked slow at first as the others wore themselves out, but as their stamina wavered, Smith kicked it up a notch. Almost halfway through the race, Smith was sitting in eighth place and looked to be out of contention, but by the time they touched the wall, Smith was in third and going to the state tournament for the second year in a row.

The next state qualifiers came in a bunch. The 200-yard freestyle quartet of Vitalis, Gebauer, Smith and Mattson swam a season-best 1:35.10, which shaved two seconds off of their prelim time.

However, it didn't look to be enough, as they finished in fifth place, just outside of the state tournament qualifications. The foursome from Grand Rapids, who finished in second, had a disqualification because of a swimmer leaving too early, and it bumped CL into fourth and onto the state tournament.

"This was a little karma from last year, as we were the ones DQ'ed after touching second," Nordby said. "That's part of racing and competition. We got a little gift, so we'll make the best of it at the state tournament."

The 400-yard freestyle team of Gebauer, Vitalis, Smith and Mattson finished in sixth place, but they were only one second from qualifying with their time. Their 3:29.61 was a season best, and all four guys swam personal bests in their respective leg.

As a team, the Wildcats finished eighth out of 14 teams with 138 points. Sartell St. Stephen ran away with the meet, winning it with 378.5 points, almost 100 points ahead of second place Grand Rapids.

"Overall, we had the youngest team there by far, so it's pretty exciting knowing how many guys will be back," Nordby said.

But, the coach also knows this season isn't quite done yet either as Smith, Vitalis, Gebauer and Mattson will head down to the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center on Friday at noon. "These guys aren't done dropping time," Nordby said. "This should be pretty fun to see how fast they go."

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