Girls swimmers from Columbus North, Columbus East and Trinity Lutheran swimmers put themselves in position to qualify for state in several events with their performances in Thursday’s North Sectional preliminaries.
The Bull Frogs will enter Saturday’s finals as No. 1 seeds in four events. The Olympians are tops in the 200-yard freestyle relay.
Trinity junior Rachel Sabotin, a Columbus resident, has the fastest qualifying times in two events. She will be the top seed in the 200 individual medley (2 minutes, 11.36 seconds) and the 500 freestyle (5:12.73).
North’s Betsy King swam the fastest times in both the 50 freestyle (24.72) and 100 freestyle (54.01). Olivia Morlok is tops in the 200 freestyle (2:00.27) and second in the 500 freestyle 5:17.07). The Bull Frogs went fastest in the 400 freestyle relay (3:48.73) and second-fastest in the 200 freestyle relay (1:45.38), and Erica Samuel is third in the 500 freestyle (5:25.81).
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“This session sets us up for Saturday,” North coach Logan Schaefer said. “We did a great job tonight — lifetime-best swims across the board — and I think the challenge in front of our team now is getting even more excited for the finals session and putting up even better times in the finals.”
The top eight in each event qualified for the championship heats, while the ninth-through-16th fastest made the consolation finals. Of the Bull Frogs’ 24 individual swims (three in each of eight events) in the prelims, 23 made either the championship of consolation heat for Saturday.
Meanwhile, East put up the fastest time in the 200 freestyle relay (1:44.81), second-fastest in the 200 medley relay (1:55.39) and fourth-fastest in the 400 freestyle relay (4:04.65).
“We had great swims,” East coach Jill Arnholt said. “We got a lot of people in the finals, and people that were kind of on the bubble got in and will swim on Saturday. We had some tough times, but then we had some really good times and good time-drops. The relays looked really good.”
The Olympians’ Maggie Johnson will take the fourth seed into the 100 butterfly finals (1:03.26). Jennifer Utterback in the 100 freestyle (55.67), Karissa Miller in the 100 backstroke (1:03.31) and Marin Wieneke in the 100 breaststroke (1:12.16) are seeded fifth.
Wieneke, a sophomore, broke Tiff Forbes’ 37-year-old school record of 1:13.26 in the breaststroke.
“It’s crazy,” Wieneke said. “I never thought I would do it. I spent the whole season looking forward to it. Last year, I had Whitley (Eicher) who almost broke it, and she just kind of paved the way for me. She helped me a lot.”
