Grafton girls make most of short-handed lineup in meet dominated by Dogs
A runner-up effort in diving set the pace for the Grafton girls’ swimming team at last week’s North Shore Conference meet in Cedarburg. KATELYN GALLUN helped the Grafton girls’ swimming and diving team to a fifth-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle relay at the North Shore Conference meet. Photo by Sam Arendt
Senior Katelyn Zarem led the Black Hawks with a second-place score of 342.1 points in her specialty, trailing only Cedarburg’s Kelsie Hall, who had 378.8.
Close behind was Port Washington junior Hayley Seitz, whose third-place effort of 340.6 points was her squad’s top finish.
Cedarburg won the overall title with 431 points, comfortably ahead of second-place Homestead (394.5) in the eight-team meet, which began with diving Thursday and concluded with swimming Saturday.
Whitefish Bay was third (368.5), followed by Nicolet (245), Grafton (232), Germantown (202), Port Washington (88) and Milwaukee Lutheran (73).
Besides piling up points with their depth, the host Bulldogs won seven of the meet’s 12 events. Leading the way was freshman Jessica Short with victories in the 200-yard individual medley and 100 backstroke.
Grafton’s next-best finishes were thirds by sophomore Stephanie Haebig in the 100 backstroke (with a personal-best time of 1 minute, 2.5 seconds) and the 400 freestyle relay team of Lisa Borden, Kaitlyn Brooks, Caitlin Hanney and Haebig (3:56.31).
Rounding out the Hawks’ top-six efforts were fifths by Haebig in the 200 freestyle (2:02.89), Hanney in the individual medley (2:21.91) and the 200 freestyle team of Haebig, Rachel Hauer, Borden and Katelyn Gallun (1:48.45) and sixths by Hanney in the 100 backstroke (1:04.91), Rachel Hauer in the 100 breaststroke (1:12.55) and the 200 medley team of Hanney, Rachel Hauer, Anna Hauer and Gallun (2:02.35).
Grafton was limited by the absence of freshman standout Sam Senczyszyn, who missed the meet to take part in a session at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado. Senczyszyn was invited to participate as a nationally ranked swimmer in her age group.
“We missed Sam, but she had a great opportunity,” Grafton coach Adan Burgos said. “She would have scored 30 to 40 points for us, so we would have easily taken fourth place.
“But we still did well with the girls we had. We had a lot of good swims in a meet that has a lot of tough teams.”
Port’s other top finishes included a sixth from Claire Kinzer in diving (303 points), seventh from the 200 freestyle team of Kelsey Zeman, Mary Nuedling, Dana Grady and Alex Anderson (1:58.22) and eighth from Anderson in the 100 butterfly (1:09.88).
This weekend, Grafton and Port will participate in a WIAA Division 2 sectional meet at Plymouth High School.
Diving will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, followed by swimming at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Sectional winners in each event will qualify for the state meet in Madison on Nov. 11 along with the next 12 best finishes from all sectionals statewide.
Most of Grafton’s top performers this year reached the state level last season, including Zarem in diving and Hanney, Borden and Haebig in swimming.
Burgos, whose team finished 13th in the 2010 state meet, also expects Senczyszyn and Rachel Hauer to join the qualifying list.
“Our team goal is to qualify eight or nine individual swims, a diver and three relays,” he said.
Port’s 2010 state qualifiers were Seitz and Kinzer in diving.
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