Boys’ and Girls’ Swimming will be offered as a High School Sport. EPGHS has joined into a Swimming Co-op Agreement with Eureka, Roanoke-Benson and Metamora High Schools. Girls’ Swimming is a Fall sport and Boys’ Swimming is a Winter sport.
For more information, please contact High School Athletic Director, Dave Ferrenburg at 309-527-4510.
SWIMMING CO-OP SPORT AT EPGHS
Second Place at El Paso Invitational
The El Paso Olympians had twice as many entries as the second biggest team, but still came up well short of winning the 2013 El Paso Invitational. The Metamora Area Swim Team proved too fast for the Olympians as the Redbirds scored 2164 to pull away from the 1547.5 earned by the Olympians. The Olympians did manage to send several individuals to the High Point Podium as Kaitlyn Ludwig, Faith Johnson, Ella Blair, Jack Weber, Shelby Heffron, Jon Hasty, Olivia McCormick, and Maci Ehrhardt all brought home some individual hardware. Declan Duley topped them all by winning all four of his individual events and coming home with the High Point Championship Plaque.
The Olympians also managed to earn quite a few PRs throughout the day as 179 performances counted as personal records. Being an invitational, swimmers were allowed to enter in four events and a couple swimmers managed to improve in all four despite how tired that must have made them. To give you an idea of how difficult it is to improve in all four events, only seven of our 108 registered swimmers managed the accomplish the task, those sever are: Mary Beth Wiegand, Gabriel Pfister, Shelby Heffron, Maci Ehrhardt, Lily Blair, Ella Blair, and Lane Dohman. Congratulations to those seven on a great meet.
If you think four PRs is tough, wait until Pontiac, when our swimmers will attempt to achieve FIVE PRs in one meet. We currently are at 34 registered swimmers and we are allowed 40. I will take the next six interested and register them.
We also had three new inductees to the IM Club: welcome Alyse Dohman, Lane Dohman, and Isabelle Kostelnick, you will receive your induction ribbons on Monday at the meeting.
A big thank you and congratulations are in order to all our parent volunteers today. Your help makes it possible to run one of the best meets in Central Illinois bar none. I am proud to be the coach for such an excellent and supportive group of parents. Your swimmers' success is very much a product of your efforts.
Double thanks to our assistant coaching staff, besides swimming to over 80 points for the team, they provided constructive criticism and encouragement to all 100 of our swimmers today, in addition to running warmups, corralling kids in the bullpen, and checking swimmers in. Thanks coaches!
Coach Michael
Olympians Improve to 2-0, Earn 201 PRs
The Olympians defeated the Lakers from Lexington by a score of 959 to 430. The Olympians also improved in 201 events. Some of those personal records doubled as team records as Declan Duley broke records in both the 25 free and 25 fly and Faith Johnson crushed her own 50 breast time. Some massive improvements as well as Luke Shaffer and Tommy O'Brien each took off over one minute from their backstroke bests.
Joining the IM Club last night were Luke Reutter, John Reutter, Ben Gensler, and Myli Ehrhardt.
I've attached results by event, results by name, Top Olympians in the 50 Free, Olympians Team Records (with 2013 highlighted in green), and the IM Club.
Olympians Win First Meet 924-426, 110 PRs
The Olympians travelled to Fairbury to swim the Stafford Sharks on Tuesday, June 11, and came away with a decisive victory. The girls on the team amassed 483 points for the team, while the boys were close with 441. Combined, our 924 points outscored the 426 earned by the Stafford Sharks by 498 points.
Several Olympians won every event they were entered in, including:
Madie Weber, Jack Weber, Ella Blair, Declan Duley, Madi Ehrhardt, Tristyn Grube, Shelby Heffron, Faith Johnson, Sebastian Meyer, Alex Rhodes, and in her first meet ever, Valerie Hamilton won every event she was entered in, which was the 25 free.
But winning events is only part of the reason we go to meets, we also go to swim our best. And out of the 167 events we were entered in, we improved in 110 of them! A few lucky swimmers were able to PR in three events: Zac Nelson, Chris Kindig, Peter Koos, Noah Stretch, Jack Weber, and Madie Weber all managed to improve in three individual events.
Some other swimmers had HUGE PRs at the Stafford Pool. Jocelyn Nelson dropped 8 seconds in her long free, AJ Hepner dropped 10 in his long free, Myli Ehrhardt dropped 9 seconds in her fly, Anthony Johnson dropped 18 in breast, Grace Skolek dropped 22 in long free, Christiana Thompson blazed through her IM 23 seconds faster than ever, Nellie Melick dropped 13 in her backstroke, Tommy O'Brien dropped 17 in his freestyle, Vera Rosenberger improved 21 seconds in her long free, but the improvers of the night go to a trio of backstrokers:
Katie Jo Jackson dropped 17 in her long free and 10 in her backstroke
Waylon Melick dropped 12 in his IM and 18 in his backstroke
and Zoey Slightom improved 45 seconds in her 50 backstroke.
We had only one inductee into the IM Club: Tristyn Grube, who also managed to swim to a first place finish in the event, nice job Tristyn.
I will send full results, a PR sheet, results by name, and new team records tomorrow after I get the ribbons sorted out.
Nice job Olympians! Up next Lexington at home on Thursday.
Don't forget to sign up for the El Paso Invitational this Saturday. Sign up by Thursday.
St. Jude Money is also due this Saturday.
We will set up for the meet on Friday night at 5:30pm, we could also use some concessions workers on Saturday.
Pontiac Pentathlon clip board will be at the pool tomorrow, you may also register via email. Just tell me who will be swimming.
Duley Breaks Miller's Records, 219 PRs
The Olympians raced themselves in an intrasquad meet on Thursday June 6th, and despite the chilly temps and the on and off precipitation, the Olympians swam to a record 219 PRs! The 15-18 Boys showed what a season of high school training can do as they shattered their relay records from 2012 in our first meet of the year. Leading the way among the individuals was 8 and under boy, Declan Duley, whose three-PR night included the removing of three of former-Olympian (and future Olympian?) Jake Miller's records from the record board. Declan beat the long free, the IM, and the breaststroke in the first meet of the season.
But Declan wasn't the biggest time-dropper of the night, the following all dropped double-digits off their previous bests:
Madie Weber, -12 in long free
Drew Van Dorsten, -12 in long free
Noah Stretch, -15 in long free and -17 in IM
Zac Nelson, -14 in IM
Gabriel Pfister, -11 in IM
Mary Rebbec, -22 in IM
Isabelle Kostelnick, -12 in breast
Shelby Heffron, -11 in long free
Lukas Holderby, -14 in fly
Anthony Johnson, -12 in IM
Sam Finck, -17 in breast
Maureen Gensler, -10 in short free
Declan Duley, -12 in IM
Carli Cooper, -17 in short free
Leyton Brown, -13 in long free
and JaLynn Broderick, -11 in IM, but by far the biggest improver of the night was Ben Gensler who dropped 7 seconds in his breast, 31 seconds in backstroke, and 50.13 seconds in his long free. Way to go, Ben!
Several swimmers also improved upon previous swims in all three events. The Triple-Crown PR earners are:
Ella Blair
Addy Brown
Celestino Duley
Declan Duley
Carlee Esser
Ben Gensler
Shelby Heffron
Jon Hasty
Max Klein
Peter Koos
Collin McCormick
Mary Rebbec
Payton Rarick
Will Pearson
Kelsey Pearson
Clayton Roberts
Shelby Roberts
Jaycie Schertz
Nathaniel Schug
Madie Weber
Jack Weber
Drew Van Dorsten
Noah Stretch
Grace Skolek
and Jordan Seal
We also had a few inductees into the IM Club: Madi Ehrhardt, Cassidy Bergquist, Jocelyn Nelson, Hannah Gilliland, Maci Erhardt, Waylon Melick, Hank Harlan, Javan Barker, and Nadia Rosenberger all swam their first competitive IM tonight. They will receive their induction ribbons tomorrow at the 9 o'clock meeting.
With Eureka Invite cancelled on Saturday, our next competition is the away meet at Fairbury on Tuesday. I need to see you on the deck at 5:15pm, warmups at 5:30pm. For away meets we often swim kids up age groups in order to get as many people as many as possible events, since few hosts besides ourselves allow multiple exhibition events. Fairbury also does not run a bullpen, we will have to get our kids where they need to be on our own. We were rained out in 2011, and home in 2012 and 2010, so it has been since 2009 since we swam at Fairbury, let's go get some good times.
Those of you who downloaded the Meet Mobile app were able to follow along in real time as the results were being entered into the computer. Just as soon as they were typed in, you could see them on your smart phone or tablet, pretty cool and sure beats crowding around the posted paper results at larger meets or waiting until midnight for coach to send them via email for the duals.
Tomorrow morning we will hand out ribbons, PR sodas, and play some games at 9am and 10am to celebrate our great first meet.
Thanks again to all the parent volunteers, we run a great meet thanks to you all.
June 15- El Paso Invitational
June 18- Titan Fun Meet! at home
June 20- v. Roanoke at home
June 22- Pontiac Pentathlon
July 2- v. Dwight at Dwight
July 9- v. Leroy at Leroy
July 11- v. Pontiac at Pontiac
July 13- Lexington Invitational
July 16- v. Metamora at home
Jul 18- v. Flanagan at Flanagan
July 25- v. Washington at home
July 27- Woodford County Champ
at Metamora (tentative)
