The Columbus North boys already were without two of their top swimmers because of illness, so Monday’s season opener against one of the nation’s top teams wasn’t pretty on the scoreboard.
Louisville St. Xavier, which has won 30 consecutive and 54 overall Kentucky state titles, won all 12 events in handing the Bull Frogs a 145-40 defeat.
North was without two of its three returning state qualifiers, Nick Green and Jared Carroll, who were sick.
"We were without a few of our top guys, but we we did want to make sure we came out and competed against one of the best teams in the country," North coach Logan Schaefer said. "Looking back year to year, we’re seeing improvement across the board with our team. Team chemistry, swimming, depth of our team is improving every year, so I’m really happy to see that tonight."
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The Bull Frogs’ other returning state qualifier, Sam Russell, led North with a second-place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1 minute, 35-hundreths of a second and a third in the 200 individual medley in 2:00.03.
Kyan Jiles (159.50), DeShawn Austin (140.95) and Cole Wheeler (127.35) finished second, third and fourth in the diving competition. Christopher Lee took third in the 50 freestyle (23.11) and fourth in the 100 backstroke (55.94), and Ayush Panda was third in the 100 freestyle (50.15).
"Maybe not time-wise, but effort and intensity and setting the tone for our team, Sam Russell did that, Christopher Lee did that and Ayush Panda did that," Schaefer said. "I’m really happy to see that against a great team tonight."
Monday’s meet was the first of three this week for the North boys. The boys and girls will compete today at Franklin in what will be the season opener for the girls. The boys and girls host North Central on Saturday morning.
"It kick starts our week in a great way," Schaefer said. "We’re looking to jump in (today) against Franklin and make improvements right away from what we saw tonight. Then, we’ll take the Thanksgiving break and come back and try to be better on Saturday than what we were at the start of this week."
