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Relays bring about Bobcat returns

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - Marshalltown senior Klaudia Hernandez cuts through the water during the breaststroke leg of the 200-yard medley relay to start Saturday’s regional swimming meet at Valley High School in West Des Moines. Hernandez helped the relay qualify for state with a combined time of 1 minute, 57.98 seconds.

WEST DES MOINES — Every tick of time off the clock moved the Bobcats’ bubble closer to bursting, but the Marshalltown girls’ swimming team didn’t want to see its season pop for the second year in a row.

The same four swimmers combined to shave critical seconds off their seed times in helping a pair of Bobcat relays advance to next weekend’s Iowa High School Girls State Swimming Championships at the Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA, avoiding back-to-back seasons in which MHS was shut out of the fall finale.

Head coach Angie Nelson said her hopes were to have each of the Bobcats’ three relays chop off a lot of time to try to qualify them for state, and the trio took a total of 15 seconds away from their respective seed times. But only the 200-yard medley relay and the 200 freestyle relay qualified, while the 400 freestyle relay came up 1.4 seconds shy of advancing.

The 200 medley relay team of Averie Wittkop, Klaudia Hernandez, Lesli Waltermire and Maeve Janssen took 4.5 seconds off their season-best clocking to touch up with a time of 1 minute, 57.98 seconds on Saturday at their regional meet at Valley High School’s Mark Wagner Pool.

Only the regional champion at each of seven meets across the state earned automatic advancement, so the other 25 spots were filled by the next-best times. Marshalltown’s time was good for 30th out of 32 qualifiers.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - Marshalltown freshman Lesli Waltermire makes her way through the pool during her leg of the Bobcats’ 200-yard freestyle relay Saturday at the regional meet in West Des Moines. Waltermire opened for Maeve Janssen, Klaudia Hernandez and Averie Wittkop and the group finished with a combined time of 1 minute, 45.58 seconds to qualify for the upcoming state meet at the Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA.

The 200 freestyle relay team, with Waltermire leading off for Janssen, Hernandez and Wittkop, took three seconds off their seed time and clocked in at 1:45.58 — the last of 32 state qualifiers.

A year after failing to reach the state meet, two relays is as much as Marshalltown could ask for.

“We really wanted those relays to move some serious time and they all three did,” Nelson said. “Overall in the meet today we cut 82 seconds, so I’m not walking out of here disappointed at all. These girls have me a meet that was really, really good, and we had some spectacular swims.”

Both qualifying Bobcat relays will swim on Saturday at the Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA, as the three relay races are timed finals. The state meet weekend kicks off Friday with the diving finals at 11 a.m. followed by the swimming preliminaries at 5 p.m. Swimming finals start at noon on Saturday.

The state meet, like the regional qualifiers, are closed to spectators. All events will be streamed live online through the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union’s website (ighsau.org).

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - Marshalltown freshman Averie Wittkop competes in the 100-yard backstroke during Saturday’s regional swimming meet in West Des Moines. Wittkop placed eighth in the event with a season-best time of 1 minute, 4.54 seconds, and was a part of both of the Bobcats’ state-qualifying relays.

Subtracting friends and families from the grandstands made Saturday’s regional meet a subdued one, but Hernandez said her teammates were there to help push the team through to state. Leaving Valley High School without that certainty, though, was hard for one of Marshalltown’s three seniors.

“It’s really bittersweet,” she said of Saturday’s regional meet. “It’s kind of hard dedicating four years of this and then knowing that I could walk away not going to state. That’s the hard part, but I’m proud of what I did and I’m proud of my team and what they did today, so I think that’s the better part of it.

“[The meet] was a little weird, but the energy is still there with my teammates and all the other teams, but it’s a little odd not having my family here and not having other fans but it’s been OK for the most part.”

Before learning of the Bobcats’ state qualifications later Saturday night, Hernandez pegged both relays that made it as having the best chances.

“Probably the two 200 relays — I think those have a really good chance of going just based on where we were seeded coming into the meet,” she said.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

Marshalltown entered Saturday’s regional ranked 33rd in the state in the 200 medley relay, and a time drop of 4.5 seconds got the Bobcats through by 21-hundredths of a second. In the 200 free relay, MHS stood 31st and shaved another three seconds off its seed time, which proved to be just enough to qualify for the 32nd and final spot at state.

“This meet felt so much different than regionals from the past and it was a hard atmosphere to be excited and in the meet, so to be able to walk away with 82 seconds cut in a meet that never really felt that same electricity that you would normally have in a regional meet is pretty phenomenal,” Nelson said. “I’m really excited for these girls because I think most of them walk away from here and say ‘I could do better’ and you just hope if that’s the case they say ‘I’m going to do this, this and this’ and go out and do it.

“This is a great group of girls, they get along really well, they swim well together, we’ve had very little girl drama which is amazing and awesome, and I think they’ve held their stuff together really well in a really strange year.”

Hernandez turned in her season-best time in the 100 breaststroke, placing seventh with a time of 1:14.85 that came up 2-hundredths shy of her all-time best that she swam last year at regionals at Southeast Polk. It was a three-second time drop from her seeding but still more than three seconds shy of advancing to state.

“It’s my favorite event and it was kind of nice to swim my best time, but it’s also sad because that’s like my last time,” Hernandez said.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

“That 1:14 means a lot going out,” Nelson added. “That’s a precious swim.”

Hernandez also anchored the Bobcats’ final race, the 400 freestyle relay, that took fifth in 3:55.38 — 7.5 seconds faster than any previous swim this season for the relay including Waltermire, Taylor Jones and Wittkop.

The best individual finish from the regional meet was the freshman Waltermire in the 50 freestyle, as she placed fifth in 25.84 — 2-hundredths of a second faster than her seeding and 6-hundredths of a second shy of the last qualifying time for state (25.24).

Janssen scored seventh in the 100 freestyle, taking 4.5 seconds off her time to finish in 58.72. Jones took eighth in 1:01.19 — her season best by two seconds.

Janssen, a sophomore, also earned eighth in the 50 freestyle (26.37), while the freshman Wittkop was eighth in the 100 backstroke (1:04.54).

Nelson highlighted Janssen’s meet in particular because of what her strong day in the pool meant to both relays qualifying for state.

Freshman Kate Jones took eight seconds off her seed time in the 100 freestyle, finishing 10th in 1:04.18, while both Leticia Herrera and Diana Espinoza took at least three seconds off their 200 individual medley times. Ciera Randall chopped seven seconds off her 200 freestyle and another 7.5 seconds off her 100 butterfly time. Erin Stanley saw a 10-second time cut in the 200 free and a 2-second drop in the 100 backstroke. Hannah Case chopped five seconds off her 500 freestyle, while Riley Robinson took two seconds off her butterfly and three seconds off her backstroke times.

“That’s pretty good considering the year that we’ve had and the training opportunities that just weren’t there this summer and going into the season,” Nelson said. “I’m just really proud of the girls, they held their stuff together pretty well. We had our ups and downs with some quarantine but we’ve been able to keep really good records and keep most of that situation isolated to make it through here.

“We’re just really glad we had the season that we did and we were able to get through this regional meet with healthy girls and the opportunity to compete. You go through all this hard work and to not have the opportunity to finish would be devastating, so I am just happy these girls get the closure that they need for all the hard work they’ve put into it.”

The Bobcats finished fourth out of seven teams swimming at the regional meet. Dowling Catholic’s coaching staff, with head coach Paul Eure, was named the Coaching Staff of the District, while Des Moines Roosevelt senior Lydia Johnston was named the Athlete of the District. Johnston won both the 200 individual medley and the 500 freestyle on Saturday.

Regional Swimming

At West Des Moines

Team Standings — 1. Dowling Catholic 520, 2. Valley 490, 3. DM Roosevelt 346, 4. Marshalltown 303, 5. Ottumwa 150, 6. DM Hoover 85, 7. DM North 7.

EVENT RESULTS

(Champion plus MHS placewinners)

200 MEDLEY RELAY — 1. DOWL (Clark, Foth, Rounds, Carlson) 1:51.09; 4. MHS (Wittkop, Hernandez, Waltermire, Janssen) 1:57.98.

200 INDIVIDUAL MEDLEY — 1. Lydia Johnson, DMR, 2:10.31; 11. Hannah Case, MHS, 2:44.65; 12. Leticia Herrera, MHS, 2:58.91; 13. Diana Espinoza, MHS, 3:06.77.

50 FREESTYLE — 1. Maggie Carlson, DOWL, 25.25; 5. Lesli Waltermire, MHS, 25.84; 8. Maeve Janssen, MHS, 26.37; 12. Taylor Jones, MHS, 28.01.

100 BUTTERFLY — 1. Adeline Li, VAL, 59.40; 10. Ciera Randall, MHS, 1:19.10; 11. Riley Robinson, MHS, 1:19.88; 12. Espinoza, MHS, 1:25.97.

100 FREESTYLE — 1. Mary Sweetman, DOWL, 54.24; 7. Janssen, MHS, 58.72; 8. T. Jones, MHS, 1:01.19; 10. Kate Jones, MHS, 1:04.18.

500 FREESTYLE — 1. Johnston, DMR, 5:09.65; 10. Case, MHS, 6:16.39; 11. Veronica Herrera, MHS, 6:53.56.

200 FREESTYLE — 1. DOWL (J. Sweetman, Rounds, Carlson, M. Sweetman) 1:40.76; 4. MHS (Waltermire, Janssen, Hernandez, Wittkop) 1:45.58.

100 BACKSTROKE — 1. Cecile Lorenzen, DMR, 56.55; 8. Averie Wittkop, MHS, 1:04.54; 11. (tie) Erin Stanley, MHS, 1:13.63; Riley Robinson, MHS, 1:13.63.

100 BREASTSTROKE — 1. Kate VanZee, VAL, 1:08.44; 7. Hernandez, MHS, 1:14.85; 11. L. Herrera, MHS, 1:28.41; 14. K. Jones, MHS, 1:36.07.

400 FREESTYLE RELAY — 1. VAL (A. He, Wyatt, K. He, Li) 3:39.58; 5. MHS (Waltermire, Jones, Wittkop, Hernandez) 3:55.38.

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