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It’s 24º at 6 a.m. Saturday morning. What would you do?

If you’re a Tiger swimmer, you get up, get dressed, and head to the high school so you can get on a bus headed to a swim meet.

Tiger swim & dive members journeyed to Elkhart Central’s pool built in 1966 for a duel meet with the Blue Blazers. The 4th lane on the 1974 score board is broken. The “left over chimney” at the entrance to the school grounds is a remant of an elemtary school that once stood where the tennis courts are. At first glance, it may be easy to understand why Elkhart Central has not been a powerhouse in swimming for some time.

However, the pool is sound, the bleachers plentiful, there will be a new score board in a few days, and not all is as it seems. The chimney was saved by a group of people who circled it with joined hands to stop demolition because it is home to an endangered species of bird. And Elkhart Central is home of Lindsay Benko - Gold Medalist swimmer at the 2000 Sidney Olympics. Now there is a reason to boast.

The Blazers have 2 young coaches (1 of which is in his first year) and a decent size team. It may not be long before they become a serious contender and in fact, Warsaw did not expect to win easy.

Case in point: in the 200 Individual Medley, Andrew Cutshall was surprised literally at the last moment. His clear 1/4 length lead was erased and eclipsed at the wall. A sure victory was stolen. There’s no doubt he’ll ever allow that again.

In a duel meet like this, 5 of the 6 lanes in this pool scored points. The last swimmer in each race was only one who would not. In the 500 yard (yes yards - almost all pools were built pre-metric and too expensive to replace) free style, Warsaw was set to conseed first place to EC’s Matt LeMasters and take 2nd, 3rd and 4th or 5th. Elkhart’s Kyle Jones, not normally the distance swimmer, stayed in 4th place until lap 12 when he began to creep up. Instead of Warsaw taking a bunch of easy points, Elkart Central took 1st and 2nd, thanks to Jones and left the Tigers’ Nate Stone battling to hold on to 5th.

At the end of the day, both boys and girls teams beat Elkart Central by 20+ points, but this just may have been a wake up call. It’s not safe to assume that a losing streak denotes a weak team. Both teams will travel to Huntington this Wednesday to meet a team that has traditionally been strong. We’ll see how the Tigers fare with lessons learned on this day.

WARSAW 104 ELKHART CENTRAL 82

200 Medley Relay - Sarah Hartle, Ava Donovan, Leah Moore, Audrey Petro

200 IM and 100 Fly - Leah Moore

200 Free Relay - Leah Moore, Kayla Hutcherson, Marisa Vogel, Audrey Petro

100 Backstroke - Andrew Cutshall

Congrats Swimmers.

Posted In: Girl's Sports > Swimming and Diving