It’s still very early in the swimming and diving season, but improvements are beginning to show for Crawfordsville as the Athenians hosted a talented Harrison team on Thursday. While the Athenians were swept as the girls fell 116-69 and the boys 110-73, there were still plenty of lifetime bests and some wins along the way. The 4x400 boys relay team of Hutton Haas, Jonathan Sosbe, Campbell Mason, and Whitman Horton narrowly edged out a first place finish to conclude the meet.
“Those lifetime bests are always something to proud of,” Crawfordsville coach Kevin Hedrick said. “When you take on a team like Harrison who has at least 40 swimmers on both sides, that’s a tough thing to do. It’s a coaches dream to have that many kids that you could get into the starting lineup.”
Guinivere Schmitzer-Torbert took home a win in the 100 breaststroke. Other wins came for CHS in the boys 200 freestyle from Mason, girls 100 butterfly from Sophia Melevage, boys 100 butterfly from Mason, boys 500 freesytle from Mason, boys 100 backstroke from Horton, and the girls 200 freestyle relay from the team of Katherine Novak, Maesa Horton, Schmitzer-Torbert and Melevage.
For the CHS boys they are having to replace a star-studded senior class and early on in the season Hedrick likes how plenty of different swimmers are stepping up to fill those roles that were left behind from a season ago.
“When you have two club swimmers in Campbell Mason and Whitman Horton that helps things along,” Hedrick said. “They’ve came into the season in shape and it’s shown with their times. Overall it’s awesome I think to be where we’re at currently and it’s exciting to see some of our kids starting to figure things out. We’re young but I know we’ll only get better.”
The same story for CHS applies on the girls side of things, but the advantage there belongs in many of those young swimmers seeing time right away a season ago. Sophomores Ellie Walker, Adah Westphal, Xcartet Aguiliar joing both Melevage and Schmitzer-Torbert who swam a season ago as freshman.
“It’s really a very similar story with the boys as we had a few girls who swam this summer and you could see that,” Hedrick said of his girls team. “We’re really blessed to have a group of really good talented girls on our team. Overall I think this is probably the best group of kids that I’ve been able to coach. It’s exciting to see what we’ll be down the road.”
The girls record falls to 4-1 on the season while the boys are now 3-2. The Athenians return to the pool on Monday when they host Greencastle.
