NEW PALESTINE — Entering the 2023-24 season, Greenfield-Central’s girls swimming and diving team knew it had the talent to reload rather than rebuild after losing a strong senior class.
While they’ve shown that to be true in dual meets all season, on Saturday, at the New Palestine Natatorium, they proved it in one of the biggest events of the season.
The Cougars won their third straight, and fifth Hoosier Heritage Conference championship in the last six years. With a score of 527, they beat runner-up Delta (369) and Hancock County foes New Palestine (262.5) and Mt. Vernon (226.5) who finished third and fourth, respectively.
“It feels really good. There’s been a lot swirling around these girls lately, and their training hasn’t been the smoothest over the past couple of weeks, but the good thing about this group is that they’ve really stayed focused,” Greenfield-Central girls assistant coach Ben Felver said. “When they have had a few hours set aside to be able to train, the training itself has gone really well.”
Greenfield-Central won eight of the 11 swimming events and had an array of swimmers crowned conference champions. The Cougars also broke three school and two conference records.
The pair of HHC records came in the two freestyle relay events.
In the 200-yard free relay, Alyssa Osborn, Selah Vahle, Rachel Stutz, and CeCe Johnson swam a 1:38.72 to best the record set by the Cougars team a year ago that included Osborn, Stutz and Johnson, along with Norah Johnson.
In the final event of the day, the 400-yard free relay, the same group chased down a 17-year-old HHC record and set a new Greenfield-Central school record.
Their time of 3:37.29 beat the rest of the field by over 11 seconds and was two seconds faster than the record time of 3:39.35 set back in 2007.
Along with being conference champions on the relay teams, Osborn, Stutz, and Vahle each won individual events, while Vahle and Osborn set new school records.
Vahle won the 200-yard freestyle and broke the G-C record with a time of 1:56.09 and Osborn won the 200 individual medley, the 100 breaststroke, and broke the Cougars 50-yard free record in the opening leg of the 200 free relay.
“We swam about how we expected [Saturday], and we got two conference records and three school records,” Felver said. “We accomplished a lot.”
The Cougars got other first-place finishes from Taylor Parsons in the 100 butterfly and Rachel Stutz in the 100 freestyle, and to sweep the relay events, the team of Parsons, Caroline Felver, Kaylie Butler and Josie Kinnaman began the day with a win in the 200 medley relay.
“From the medley relay on, all the way until the end they put together a really solid meet,” coach Felver said.
Along with the top finishes, the Cougars showed their depth by taking multiple top spots in various events.
Besides Vahle’s win in the 200 free, Johnson was runner-up and Katie Jennings placed third. In the 200 IM, Butler was runner-up to Osborn. Stutz placed second in the 50 free. Johnson and Jennings were second and third in the 500 free, respectively. Sonja Jahrsdoerfer and Butler placed second and fourth in the 100 breaststroke. And in the 1-meter diving event, Kersey Hudson and Avery Davis took third and fourth, respectively.
The Cougars weren’t the only Hancock County school with names near the top of multiple events.
New Palestine swimmers swam career-best times to help the Dragons improve on a seventh-place finish in the event a season ago.
“The talent of the girls has improved. They work really hard and are buying into our program,” New Palestine head coach Chris Kingery said. “They’re just working really hard to be better every day.”
In the 50 free, Sullie Leavell placed fourth and Chloe Siler finished in fifth, in the 100 free Adrianna Huston came in fourth, and in the 100 breaststroke Lillie Abernathy placed third.
Abernathy’s time of 1:10.97 was the second fastest time in school history.
Those four swimmers made up the Dragons 400 free relay team which placed third, along with the 200 free relay team that was runner-up with the second fastest time (1:43.45) in program history.
In diving, Isabelle Tull was second with the third-best score in Dragons history, a 325.85.
“They swam really well, and they really want it,” Kingery said. “They want to take down those records and be a part of New Palestine history.”
For Mt. Vernon, they saw top-five finishes in multiple events.
The Marauders 200-yard medley relay team of Catherine Hiner, Anna Hiner, Calista Smith and Madelyn Meyer began the day with a third-place finish. The same group ended the day by placing fourth in the 400 free relay.
Individually, Smith placed fourth in the 200 IM and fifth in the 100 breaststroke, while Anna Hiner was third in the 50 free and fourth in the 100 free.
In the 1-meter diving event, Taylor Sauri placed fifth.
