Sports : Girls Swim Results: Grinnell 8/29/23

The beauty of swimming is that it can be an individual sport just as much as it can be a team sport. With our numbers being low this season, it will be very tough to compete on the team level with other schools that have squads two, three or four times our size. And with swimming being a one-class sport, we swim against lots of schools that are two, three or even 10-times our size. We just don't have the bodies to fill a roster like a school can with a squad of 40+ girls. Our main focus is always on working together to score points for the team - whether that comes from first place finishes or fifth. But another gauge of success is improving individual times, and that can be done completely independent of the competition.
Last night, we had one of those nights. It was a great night of improving individual times, even if we didn't have the team points to show on the board. Of the 21 swims we had, 18 of them were new best times. Many of those were dropping more than two seconds each.
Junior and three-time letter winner Olivia Schminke added top points by winning the 200 Individual Medley with a new season best of 2:37.43, cutting five seconds off her time from the previous meet. She was also an integral part of the 200 Medley and Freestyle Relays that placed fourth and second respectively.
Senior and captain Tori Elwick had another strong night, improving her 50 Free time to 27.44 and putting up two relay splits well under 27 seconds. She took second place in both the 50 and 100 Free, despite swimming in the slower of two heats. She was more than a body length ahead of the next girl in her heat, but managed to push herself hard enough to nab top places from girls in the fast heat.
Another senior and captain posted a great time in her focal event: Mac Goodell swam a 7:05. 54 in the 500 Freestyle to be mere seconds from her goal of going under seven minutes this season.
Athletic performances aside, the girls cheered each other on through the whole meet - some still breathing hard from their last swim just moments before. The camaraderie and sportsmanship displayed by all teams all night was something to take great pride in. It's a great sport.
We have 10 days off before we head to Waterloo for an invitational meet Sept 9.