Greenfield-Central’s Norah Johnson celebrates winning the 100-yard freestyle at the New Palestine Sectional.
Tom Russo | The Daily Reporter
By Brady Extin | Daily Reporter
HANCOCK COUNTY – Coming into the season, the Greenfield-Central girls swim team had their sights set on repeating what they did just the year prior.
First place at the Hoosier Heritage Conference meet, first place at the New Palestine Sectional, and multiple records broken have three of those four boxes checked off.
Today, at the IHSAA Girls Swimming and Diving State Finals preliminaries, they will try and check off No. 4.
“Most teams have to taper really hard to get out of their sectional, so on Friday night most people actually add time. Our idea and goal was to taper slightly for sectional and then fully taper by the time that we headed to state, so that we could have some time drops. With time drops at the prelims, you are usually bumping up some big spots,” G-C head coach Emily Logan said. “One of our big team goals is to just have a good showing overall with our relays placing and scoring and our individuals as well. (We want to have) a good overall meet as a team to place in the upper echelon of teams in the state.”
Last season, the Cougars advanced two events to Saturday’s finals.
Senior Norah Johnson placed 16th in the 100-yard breaststroke, and along with her, Mary Ellen Stratman, Alyssa Osborn and Rachel Stutz placed 14th in the 200 medley relay.
This time around, the Cougars will be looking to repeat that, and add to it.
“We’ve got some good seeds, and some good placing in our heats to kind of set us up well to get the times that we need to get. We’re kind of eyeing all of that and the hope is that we have some good time drops (tonight) and move up,” Logan said. “Honestly, we would love to have all three relays make it back and as many individuals as we can.”
The Cougars will have participants in nine of the 11 swimming events, with seven different girls representing Greenfield-Central.
Johnson will lead the way for the Cougars after breaking four sectional records just a week ago.
Individually, she will compete in both the 100 breaststroke and the 100 freestyle.
This will be Johnson’s fourth time competing at the state finals in the 100 breaststroke. Last season, she placed 16th with a time of 1:06.07.
Her sectional final time of 1:04.06 has her seeded ninth, and her time of 52.67 in the 100 free has her seeded 16th.
“We would love to see her make it to the top eight and get on the podium,” Logan said. “That would be our first girl on the podium since we’ve been here for the past 11 years. That would be a big program goal.”
The two relays that she is a part of, the 200 medley and 200 free, are seeded 15th and 17th, respectively.
The 200 medley team of Johnson, Stratman, Stutz and Osborn will be looking to best their 14th-place finish last season.
“If we can just hit things right and get a good time drop. Earlier in the season, that relay was ranked in the top 10 in the state as well as our 200 free relay, so we’re kind of hoping that we can get even one relay through to the top eight. That would be fantastic,” Logan said. “If not, just as high placing as we can possibly get.”
Johnson, Stutz, and Osborn will be joined by Cecelia Duffy-Johnson in the 200 free.
Along with Johnson, Osborn is the only other Cougar to be competing in four events.
In addition to the two relays, she will be competing individually in the 100 breaststroke, and the 200 IM.
The other three members of the relays, Stratman, Duffy-Johnson and Stutz will be competing in their own events as well.
Stratman returns in the 100-yard butterfly where she placed 27th, Duffy-Johnson will be competing in the 200 free, and Stutz will be swimming in the 50 free.
Rounding out the events for Greenfield-Central will be the 400 freestyle relay consisting of Duffy-Johnson, Stratman, Selah Vahle and Reagan Crouch.
Being a freshman, Vahle will be the only Cougar without previous state experience, and for Logan that experience will be huge.
“It’s huge. Salah being a freshman you might have the freshman jitters, but the rest of them are very seasoned and veteran. Norah and Mary have been there all the way through, and Rachel, Alyssa, Cece and Reagan have that experience from last year. To have all of those to be able to keep the nerves calm is huge,” Logan said. “They’ve all done this before and are pretty good at managing and keeping that under control. They’ll be sharing that advice with Selah and will just kind of keep everybody focused on the goal and doing their best.”
Competing in the diving portion of Saturday’s state finals will be Mt. Vernon’s Riley Nielsen.
Nielsen qualified for the event after a seventh-place finish at Tuesday’s Brownsburg Regional. She won the New Palestine sectional with a score of 329.5 and had a score of 314.75 at the regional.
Last season, an injury ended her season prior to the sectional.
All diving will take place on Saturday, with the top 20 of 32 competitors advancing to the semis after five dives each. After three dives in the semis, the top 16 will advance to the final round for another three dives.
The swimming prelims begin tonight at 6 p.m. at the IU Natatorium in Indianapolis. The top 16 in each event will advance to Saturday’s finals beginning at 1 p.m. Diving prelims begin at 9 a.m. on Saturday with the semis after, and the finals to take place during the swimming.
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2023 IHSAA Girls Swmming and Diving State Finals
Time: Friday 6 p.m. Swimming Preliminaries. Saturday 9 a.m. Diving Preliminaries. 1 p.m. Championship/Consolation Finals in all swimming events; Diving Finals
Site: Indiana University Natatorium, IUPUI, 901 W. New York St., Indianapolis
Information: $10 per session or $19 both days general admission. Children 5 years and younger admitted free for general admission only. All tickets are digital only through your mobile phone. All competition will be streamed live at IHSAAtv.org via pay-per-view for $10 for Friday’s preliminaries only or $15 for both days.
Event order: 200-yard medley relay, 200-yard freestlye, 200-yard IM, 50-yard freestlye, 1-meter diving, 100-yard butterfly, 100-yard freestyle, 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard freestyle relay, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard breaststroke, 400-yard freestyle relay
