Swim and Dive Groups Rolling into Midseason Take a look at

“It’ll be nice working with proper villains again.”
— Don Cheadle, “Ocean’s Eleven”

After a few weekends dominating overmatched opponents in double twin meets, the Franklin swimming and diving groups get a chance to punch inside their very own weight class once more beginning on Friday — and so they’re trying ahead to it.

The Gail Pebworth Invitational at Wabash pits the Grizzlies towards a number of the high groups within the Midwest — together with the DePauw ladies, at the moment ranked twenty fifth nationally — and it’ll function a midseason checkpoint of kinds for the swimmers, who will not be totally tapered (as they are going to be for the HCAC Championships in February) however will nonetheless be primed to go quick.

“Just throwing on tech suits and feeling a little rested is just fun,” Griz coach Zach Rayce stated. “And that’s what we’re going to preach; if you don’t like how you swam in prelims or you don’t like how you swam on the day prior, fix it. Just have fun. … I’ll worry about the results; I’ll worry about everything else. Just enjoy swimming, enjoy swimming with each other. I think throughout the year so far, I’ve been seeing more of that, of just having fun and having fun racing. And it helps when you’re getting wins, especially leading up to a championship meet.”

Franklin has been getting wins in convincing vogue. The ladies’s staff gained its final 4 duals towards Hanover, Manchester, Transylvania and Pikeville by a median of 159 factors, whereas the lads beat these groups by a median of virtually 101. The competitors this weekend might be significantly harder, however that is precisely what the Grizzlies need as they attempt to inch their approach nearer to NCAA Division III qualifying instances.

On the lads’s aspect, Zachary Jackson-Blaine hopes to nail down an NCAA B customary within the 50-yard freestyle; he swam a time of 20.33 seconds finally season’s HCAC meet, and the B minimize time for this season is 20.36. For the ladies, Celeste Hollis (100 and 200 butterfly) and Kat Lundy (100 and 200 backstroke) have each put up greatest instances inside shouting distance of the cuts, and so they’ll be attempting to succeed in these requirements or not less than come shut at Wabash.

The Grizzlies’ greatest probability at an NCAA customary this weekend might be within the ladies’s 400 medley relay. The quartet of Lundy, Avery Tomlinson, Hollis and Petal Sloan swam a 4:00.25 on the Battle within the Bluegrass meet final month at Centre, a time that ranked seventh nationally on the time (it is at the moment twenty third). Suited and rested, the group ought to have the ability to get itself inside vary of the varsity file time of three:50.40 set by Lundy, Caileigh McCafferty, Hollis and Sloan final 12 months; the NCAA B minimize of three:49.72 is not far past that.

Doing properly on that relay is of specific significance to the ladies’s staff after it was disqualified throughout final season’s HCAC meet, undercutting any probability the Grizzlies had at an NCAA look.

“Last year, getting disqualified in both medleys, it didn’t sit well with them,” Rayce stated. “They’ve taken it really serious; you’ve kind of seen the switch flip of, ‘No one’s going to be close to us.’ Now DePauw’s got a really, really good medley relay that’s going to push us, and I wouldn’t be upset if both of us got B cuts and we both moved up the rankings, just to boost competition.

“Obviously going after the file is the first step. … If we’re fortunate sufficient to get the B minimize, then we’ll discover a new purpose afterward.”

Nearly three months still remain between this meet and the HCAC Championships, and the NCAA meet is a month after that, but this checkpoint meet is likely the fastest that the Grizzlies will go between now and then. Having not seen his team rested or suited up yet this fall, Rayce isn’t totally sure what to expect — but everything he’s seen leading up to this point has him feeling optimistic.

“This previous meet with Transy actually helped solidify a variety of ideas of the place we’re within the taper course of,” he said. “Still engaged on a few small issues for (this) week, however simply attempting to work our approach up within the rankings as excessive as we will get and hit that full taper afterward, however I really feel like we’re in an awesome spot. Obviously, time will inform, however I’m proud of the place we’re.”

Click here for a live video feed of the swimming portion of the meet throughout the weekend, or right here to observe the diving competitors.