Swimmers see tough field at Hendrix meet
By Special to the Times
Thursday, February 4, 2010 12:13 PM CST
The North Little Rock High School swimming teams both finished in the middle of the pack at the 47th annual Hendrix Invitational swim meet recently in Conway.
The meet drew record entries from schools across the state. “This was the largest high school meet I have ever seen,” said North Little Rock coach Rich Poling. “There were 439 swimmers and divers, representing 29 schools here today.
“It was a pretty wild day when you have that many athletes in an enclosed pool area. I have to commend the Hendrix meet coordinators for doing a good job of keeping the meet going without too many snags.
“The meet took five and half hours to complete, including a twenty minutes delay in the afternoon, when we weren’t able to hear the starter horn because of the noise from the rain hitting the glass roof panels at the Hendrix pool. It was an interesting day”
Overall the Lady Charging Wildcats finished 11th out of 25 teams. Conway was the winner.
The Charging Wildcats were 13th of 22 teams, with Little Rock Catholic winning the meet.
“There were so many teams competing that the points were spread out over all of them,’’ said Poling. “Except for the top two or three teams, there was a group of teams, including us, who were within a handful of points of jumping up four or five places in the standings.
“We had several opportunities to make that jump, but didn’t take advantage of them,” said Poling.
“We did see some pretty exciting races by several of our swimmers,” said North Little Rock coach David DeGeus. “Overall, we would have liked to have finished higher, but, on the positive side, we had swimmers make three state meet qualifying times, set one new school record and had 26 personal best time swims. That gives us something to be glad about and to build on.”
Highlights for the Lady Cats were top ten finishes by Andrea Foster (fifth in the 50-yard freestyle), Tayler Jones (seventh in the 500-yard freestyle and ninth in the 100-yard breaststroke) and the 400-yard freestyle relay of Foster, Jones, Ashley Lewis and Lauren Underwood (fifth). Tayler Jones’s 500 freestyle time was both a state meet qualifying time and a North Little Rock High School record.
Charging Wildcats John Allen Jenkins led the perfromance by finishing third in the 1-meter dive.
Others with top 10 finishes were Sam Scott (seventh in the 500-yard freestyle) and the 200-yard medley relay of Devin Dotson, Devin Scott, Billy Stacy and Sam Scott (ninth).
Sam Scott’s 500 freestyle time and the 200 medley relay were both state meet qualifying times.
North Little Rock swimmers who recorded personal bests were: Hannah Beaver (50 and 100 freestyle), Sarah Brown (200 freestyle and 100 backstroke), John David Dial (100 freestyle and 100 breaststroke), Devin Dotson (100 backstroke), Jeff Johnson (100 breaststroke), Tyler Latimer (100 backstroke and 100 butterfly), Ashley Lewis (100 freestyle), Broderick McGee (50 and 100 freestyle), Billy Stacy (100 breaststroke and 100 butterfly), Sebastian Stefanov (500 freestyle), Dylan Stone (200 and 500 freestyle), Lauren Underwood (100 breaststroke), Florian Volz (200 freestyle and 100 butterfly) and Cate Woodrow (100 freestyle and 100 breaststroke).
The Cats will swim at Cabot tonight.
