Greg Frazier
Sports Columnist
Womens’ swim will be top 20 at State this year.
“I think we’re going to show how good we are and surprise everyone,” senior swimmer Isi Albers said.
The five dominant swimmers on the team are seniors Katherine Kempf, Caroline Kinstler and Albers, accompanied by junior Kendra Howard and sophomore Parker Hageman. Each one of these five swimmers competed at State last year in eight events.
Hageman was the third ranked freshman in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:57.73 and the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 1:01.76. Hageman placed 28 out of 46 in the backstroke.
Howard became the second ranked sophomore in the 100-yard freestyle and swam a 54.7. She was also the fourth ranked sophomore in the 200-yard IM (an IM is a butterfly stroke, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle in one race) with a time of 2:10.94.
Kempf placed 23 out of 35 in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 25.23.
During the 200-yard medley, the team secured a time of 2:00.20. Three of the swimmers on the relay are now seniors and Haley O’Brien has graduated. The 400-yard freestyle relay had a swimmer from each class on it: O’Brien, Kempf, Howard and Hageman. They were able to swim 5.24 seconds faster than their seeded time of 3:46.75 (a seeded time is the times competing swimmers submit to swim at a meet).The 200-yard freestyle was Webster’s strongest event where Albers, Kempf, Howard and Hageman placed 10 out of 42. Hageman said, “We’re staying positive and encouraging everyone. We’re hoping to compete well, and I think we will do well.”
This year State is being separated into two different categories for events, the automatic time (which has been the normal timings) and the consideration time.
The consideration time is if the automatic standard elicits fewer than 32 swimmers, the consideration qualifiers who have been declared as entries in that event will be used to fill the event to 32 competitors, fastest to slowest. This change elicits more people to go to State to compete.
Albers said, “We’re hoping to get as many people to State this year because of this new change.”
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