Swimmers make Mid-State Conference meet interesting

By John George

sports@eot.com

Although they didn't climb the Mid-State ladder as they had hoped when the season began, the Perham swim team refuses to be disappointed with another third place finish at the conference meet last Friday in Staples.

Park Rapids defended their conference title with 397 points, and Detroit Lakes (374) finished second, but Perham was closer than ever with 350, well ahead of fourth place Staples-Motley (208).

"I'm not disappointed with not catching Park Rapids and D.L.," head coach Sheri Ressler said. "It's not about passing them. What we focus on is getting better, lowering times. I couldn't be prouder of these girls and how hard they work and they way they've improved times all year."

The Jackets had their best conference meet, by a long shot. Previously, they had never had more than two All-Conference or Honorable Mention All-Conference performances at the meet (All-Conference is first place, Honorable Mention is second and third).

Brooke Mickelson earned All-Conference honors with a first place finish in diving with a first place score of 183.60. Ashley Niemela was fourth with a score of 154.70.

Perham's next best individual finish was turned in by Abby Kratzke, who finished second in the 100 butterfly with a time of 1:10.46.

Also earning Honorable Mention was Leah Richter, who's time of 59.84 in the 100 free broke her own school record and was good for third place at the Mid-State meet.

The Jackets also had two relay team's finish in second place for Honorable Mention. The first relay to earn the honor was the 200 free team of Kaila Formanek, Jeanna Kratzke, Sara Formanek and Richter, which missed the school record by a fraction of a second.

The next relay, the 400 free team of Jeanna Kratzke, Sara Formanek, Abby Kratzke and Richter, did set a new school record with a time of 4:07.16, almost two full seconds below that groups previous mark of 4:09.04.

"We lowered all these times without even tapering," Ressler said.

tapering is the process of building the muscles up to the point of exhaustion, then resting, recovering and building back up to peak performance. The process is a common practice for swimmers and runners. Coaches usually expect an individuals best performance possible after tapering.

Ressler said she was working the girls very hard the rest of this week, then tapering back next week heading into the 8A Section Meet in Grand Forks, Nov. 10-11.