Columbus North and Trinity Lutheran will be sending swimmers to next weekend’s state meet, and Columbus East and North have divers headed to Tuesday’s Bloomington North Diving Regional with hopes of qualifying for state.
Trinity sophomore Rachel Sabotin will make her second consecutive trip to state. Sabotin, a Columbus resident and the Cougars’ lone competitor, swam a sectional-record 1 minute, 52.46 seconds in winning the 200-yard freestyle and came back to take the 500 freestyle in 4:59.25, both personal bests and school records.
“I was happy with my times,” Sabotin said. “This week was kind of just about qualifying for state, and then next week will be more focused on dropping time and getting where I need to be.”
Columbus North qualified its 200 freestyle relay team to state. Sophomores Betsy King and Erica Samuel, freshman Riddhi Garg and sophomore Olivia Morlok won in 1:39.35.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
That came right after Morlok achieved a state-cut time in finishing second in the 500 freestyle in 5:01.81.
“I’ve been working for that all season with that in the back of my mind every day, so it’s really great to be able to achieve that today,” Morlok said.
Morlok also finished second in the 200 freestyle (1:56.70), and King took second in the 50 freestyle (24.54) and 100 freestyle (52.37). King missed the state cut by three-hundreths of a second in the 100 freestyle and is hoping for a call back.
King, Samuel, Kaitlyn Niebrugge and Morlok finished third in the 400 freestyle relay (3:40.22). Ella Anderson advanced to the diving regional with a third-place finish (306.15), and Samuel was third in both the 200 freestyle (1:56.70) and 500 freestyle (5:15.60).
“Across the board, we took advantage of everything that was in front of us, and capitalized on it,” North coach Logan Schaefer said. “The majority of our swimmers who swam best times in prelims came back and swam faster in the finals, and that was great to see.”
The Bull Frogs finished second overall with 404 points, and the Olympians were fifth with 203. Bloomington South scored 473 points to win its third consecutive sectional title.
East senior Maggie Gregory set a school record in winning the diving competition with 351.50 points.
The top eight finishers in Tuesday’s diving regional qualify for the state finals.
“I was coming in confident, but my goal was not to win, but to do my personal best,” Gregory said. “The majority of my dives, I hit. There were a few that I wasn’t too happy about, but they went OK, so I wasn’t too terribly upset about any of them.”
The Olympians also set a school record in the 200 medley relay. Jennifer Utterback, Marin Wieneke, Whitley Eicher and Lizzy Frazier finished second in 1:54.29.
The same quartet took third in the 200 freestyle relay (1:43.48). Frazier was fourth in the 100 freestyle (55.97).
“It was a great day for us,” East coach Jill Arnholt said. “We had fantastic swims, really good times. The girls were pumped, and they did what they came to do, and that was swim fast.”
