Swimmers win first competition

A strong Sisters High School girls' varsity squad won their first meet of the season against Mt. View, Gladstone and the host team at the Madras Relay Invitational on Saturday, December 4.

The boys had to settle for second place.

Going into the last event, the 400-yard freestyle relay (Brennan Miller, Remington Bruce, Ian Baldessari and Jake Miller), trailed leader Madras by only one point. In spite of a heroic effort by anchor Jake Miller, the Outlaws could not quite catch up with the White Buffaloes.

With the help of several JV swimmers, the varsity girls were able to fill all eight relays and finished five of the events well ahead of their competition.

"Barely in their third week of training, many swimmers are already showing equal or better results than at the end of last season," coach Isolde Hedemark commented. "Besides, newcomers Codie Lagao and Brennan Miller demonstrated clearly that they will be very competitive at the district and possibly state level."

Michelle Young, Tia Berg, Katie Stewart and freshman Codie Lagao set the pace in the first event, winning the 200-yard medley relay with decent splits for the beginning of the season. The same foursome also won the 200-yard butterfly relay and the 400-yard individual medley relay.

Harley Bowler, Clare Greaney, and Marcy Calavan moved up from junior varsity to fill slots in the 200-yard freestyle and 200-yard breaststroke relays respectively.

The boys followed suit and won the first event, the 200-yard medley relay, with an incredibly fast anchor leg by Tyler Berg. Berg finished the 50-yard freestyle in a personal record of 26.1 seconds, jamming his fingers so hard into the touch pad that he had to tape them for the rest of the meet.

The boys could not fill the 200-yard butterfly and 200-yard breaststroke relays but were again victorious in the 200-yard backstroke relay. Freshmen Brennan Miller (30.2) and Ian Baldessari (32.4) joined Tyler Berg (32.5) and Tyler Baldessari (29.0) in this highly contested relay against a very strong team from Gladstone.

Conor Greaney and Seth Urquhart moved up from junior varsity to join Remington Bruce and Brennan Miller for a second-place finish in the 200-yard. freestyle relay.

The Outlaws return to Madras on December 9 for a regular competition against Redmond, Summit, and the host team.