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Princeton Relays
The Wildcat girls swim team ushered in a new era under Head Coach Ellen Heath and without mainstay Thomi Lee by performing very well in the Princeton Relays.
The relays are a fun, early season meet that doesn’t feature races that the girls will see throughout the year but allows them to have fun teaming up in different relay combinations. The Wildcats were among six teams at the event.
“We had a very strong first half of the meet placing in the top two or three of each varsity event. Several  teams at this meet already had some competition under their belt,” Heath said. “We swam and dove extremely well for our first competition.  Our junior varsity relays were one of the top relay teams in every event.”
The girls earned a third place finish in the first varsity event of the day, the 200 yard medley relay.
In the 3x200 relay, the Wildcats finished in second place behind Mississippi 8 Conference rival Cambridge-Isanti. The Bluejackets quartet finished the race in 7:16.05 while CL’s foursome came in at 7:22.20.
In fact, the Wildcats were consistently finishing just behind the winners, as they accumulated plenty of second place finishes but didn’t have any wins on the day.
The 200 free relay was another second place finish for the ‘Cats. They clocked in at 1:51.29.
In the diving relay, CL had 171.50 points, seven points behind winner Cambridge-Isanti.
CL got one more second place finish, in the 3x100 relay. The girls finished in 4:10.38.
As a team, the Wildcats finished in third place with 216 points. Cambridge-Isanti won the meet with 242 points, Milaca came in second with 222 and M8C opponent Princeton came in fourth with 208 points.
Heath was happy with the results, especially when she compared them to last year’s results in the same meet.
“Our A dive team, Payton Nelson and Allison Stiller,  scored 20 more points than the previous year's dive team.  Our A Medley relay  of Kalli Jo Olson, Danie Barnes, Dani Berg and Danielle Smythe swam a faster time at this meet than the medley relay did all last season,” Heath explained. “Kalli led off the backstroke relay with the fastest split of any of the teams in the meet. We've been working on perfecting 'step up' starts and the kids responded well.  We won some races on great starts and great finishes.  The little details are progressing well.”

Monticello 111, Chisago Lakes 70
The little details didn’t mean much when the Chisago Lakes swim team jumped into the pool with Monticello. The Magic  is a perennial power in the Mississippi 8 and finished in the top 15 at the state tournament last year.
The Wildcats only got one win on the day, Berg in the 200 freestyle, and just a handful of second places as Monti cruised to an easy win.
Berg’s winning time of 2:09.92 was impressive, topping the second place finisher by over five seconds.
Berg also had a second place finish in the 100 butterfly, coming in at 1:11.79. She was also part of the 200 free relay team that finished second.
“The fly is not her primary stroke but she is such a talented athlete that she swims well wherever the teams needs her,” Heath said of Berg.
The 200 medley relay team of Olson, Hannah Stec, Mara Harris and Smythe started the day with a second place finish.
In diving, Nelson finished in second place with a score of 186.85. She finished only behind a medalist from the state tournament last year.
Halfway through the meet, the Wildcats were down by 30 points and went down by 65 before the Magic started to swim exhibition. for the last two events.
Heath didn’t look so much at the team results as she did at the times against Monticello, and what she saw, she was happy with. “Our backstrokers and breaststrokers had some very good times,” she said. “I am really pleased and impressed with our early season individual times and the performance of the team as whole.”

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