Young Spartan swimmers get closer to postseason

October 2, 2009 2:09 pm
Eliza Silverman competes in the 200 meter medley relay Tuesday against Sequim. The Spartans finished the heat in first place with a team score of 12.74 seconds.
Eliza Silverman competes in the 200 meter medley relay Tuesday against Sequim. The Spartans finished the heat in first place with a team score of 12.74 seconds.

With less than a month to go before the district and state meets, Bainbridge swim and dive coach Greg Colby is keeping his eye on the big picture.

“As a young team, they’re learning about high school swimming and how to race up to four times each week compared to maybe once-a-month in club swimming,” he said.

So far, Colby’s young team has adjusted well. With a win over Sequim Tuesday, Bainbridge improved its record to 3-3 in dual meets, while finishing second out of six teams in the Spartan Relays early in the season.

Bainbridge won handily, 105-42, against Sequim Tuesday, but that wasn’t obvious based on the swimmers’ enthusiasm. During each race, all the swimmers not in the race or preparing for the next one shouted encouragement every time a swimmer came up for a breath.

This week, Bainbridge travels to Seattle to participate in the Mukilteo Invitational.

Colby said the goal for the team is to get the three relay teams qualified for the state meet at this weekend’s meet.

So far this season, freshmen Sarah Grundman and Kay Sterner qualified in the 500-meter freestyle. Sophomore Tess Harpur qualified in the 100-meter fly.

Colby said he would also like to qualify his divers for state this weekend.

In the early part of the season, Colby said, Bainbridge often raced multiple times each week. As the regular season winds down, he said, Bainbridge only races once a week. Now the swimmers have the ability to find a rhythm between practices and races.

Colby again emphasized his desire for the three relay teams to qualify for state and continue to improve throughout the second half of the year.

“Our expectations for the month of October are just to stay healthy and train hard.

At this point of the season, Colby said, the team has some strong events and others that need improvement. The team excels at the 200-meter freestyle, 200-meter individual medley, 500 freestyle and 100 fly, he said. As the season progresses, Colby said the team is working to improve its performance in the backstroke, breaststroke and sprint freestyle (100, 50) races.