Gallery • 20 Photos

By Jakob Twigg

Freshman Alison Godfrey performs a relay exchange during her event on Saturday, May 6.

The girls swim team placed eighth at EKL League championships at Blue Valley Southwest on Saturday, May 6. This was the first league championship meet for the girls swim team in the new league.

The meet was a two-day, preliminaries-finals meet where the top 18 in each individual event and the top 12 teams in the relay events moved on to the finals. Five swimmers moved on to the individual finals with three relays returning as well.

Junior Jordan Robinson was very pleased with how she performed both in preliminaries and finals. She placed 11th in both the 200 freestyle and the 500 freestyle.

“The first day went really well for me because I cut time in both the 200 [freestyle] and 500 freestyle,” Robinson said. “I also made finals in both which was a pretty big accomplishment.”

Girls swim coach Kelly Downard was very pleased with how the girls swam in the meet overall.

“I am very proud of how the girls did, looking at the psych sheet, there was a pretty overwhelming difference between the past years’ league meets as opposed to this one,” Downard said. “They rose to the occasion with many of the girls swimming best times and qualifying for finals.”

Robinson thought that the team did very well for the first EKL league meet.

“I think every individual did as well or better than expected at this meet, which is great considering how tough the competition was going into this meet compared to league competition from previous years,” Robinson said.

Downard agrees that the competitiveness of the meet had an effect on the number of finalists but thought the positives of facing better competition outweighed the placing.

“There are girls who didn’t get to swim [in finals] who probably would have gotten a medal in last years league,” Downard said. “but I think it was beneficial because this was a more competitive meet as there were 6A swimmers there as well.”

The girls will compete next at the Kansas 1A-5A state championship meet on Friday, May 26.

Individual results are as follows:

Robinson placed tenth in the 200 freestyle with a time of 2:09.45, and tenth in the 500 freestyle with a 5:52.09.

Sophomore Celia Kistner placed 17th in the 200 freestyle with a time of 2:18.88.

Freshman Allison Godfrey placed 14th in the 50 freestyle with a 26.56 and tenth in the 100 freestyle with a 57.73.

Freshman Cadee Morris placed 13th in the 100 butterfly with a 1:06.20 and 15th in the 100 backstroke with a 1:11.64.

Junior Jazlynn Schwegman placed 15th in the 100 butterfly with a 1:07.33.

Freshman Kayla Teasley placed 11th in the 100 freestyle with a 58.54 and ninth in the 100 breastroke with a 1:15.66.

The 200 medley relay placed ninth with a 2:05.31.

The 200 freestyle relay placed fifth with a 1:46.91.

The 400 freestyle relay placed eighth with a 4:14.27.