MORGANTOWN — With the end of the high school swimming season looming, teams across West Virginia are fine-tuning as much as possible as Regionals are set to be held one week from Saturday on Feb. 3 at Brooke High School.
One of the final meets of the regular season was held Wednesday at the Mylan Aquatic Center with Morgantown.
Unlike the two MoHawk Invitationals held at Mylan Aquatic Center previously this season, Wednesday’s meet was smaller with Weir, Elkins, and North Marion being the three schools traveling to compete with the co-hosting Hawks and Mohigans.
Morgantown won the boys team title with a score of 77, ahead of second-place Elkins with 42. Elkins won the girls’ title with a score of 75, ahead of Morgantown’s 58.
Despite the smaller number of teams, UHS coach Nicolle Davis says different teams have the chance to compete with different swimmers and swim in the state meet pool.
“It’s a great opportunity for everyone involved,” she said. “It gives everyone another chance to improve. We knew the teams coming in this evening would be here in full force and that gives us the chance to see what we need to do in the coming weeks. We even had a school record broken that has been on the board since 2016-2017.”
UHS junior Nate Lindsay clocked a 49:02, taking first place in the 100-yard freestyle to set the new boys’ school record.
Other winners for University were Tyler Zundell (200 freestyle) and the girls’ 200-yard relay team of Monica Fisher, Isabella Ratnour, Haley Kramer and Maddie McCoy.
MHS senior and WVU signee Delaney Householder took first overall in the girls’ 100-yard freestyle and 100-yard backstroke and was able to improve on her fastest time of the season so far in the freestyle with a 55.14.
“She told me after the race that she thought she felt a little faster but missed the first wall slightly,” MHS coach Eric Householder said. “She is one of the ones that still isn’t one hundred percent sure on where she will be for us come regionals but she feels ready for whatever comes her way.”
Other winners for the Mohigans were Lincoln Alugbuo (200 IM), Daniel Hammer (50 freestyle, 100 backstroke), Lillian Linscheid (100 butterfly), Christian Hammer (100 butterfly) and the boys’ 200 medley relay team of Christian Hammer, James McGinnis, Daniel Hammer and Colin Bailey.
“Earlier in the season you’re able to spread the team out as far as events and let them hone in on where they want to focus on competing later on,” MHS coach Eric Householder said. “We want to make sure everyone is in their best position going into regionals so we can qualify as many for states as possible.”
In the Regional meets, 24 swimmers will qualify for the state meet with the top three finishers in each event per region (12 total swimmers) automatically qualifying for the state swim meet scheduled for Feb. 15-16 in Morgantown. Then, the following 12 best times from all four regions combined will make up the rest of the field in each event.
For example, if a swimmer finishes fourth in the region in an event, their time would be compared to every swimmer in the three remaining regions that finished fourth or lower in the same event, eventually determining the rest of the 24-person field for every event.
